President Wilson’s attitude has not thus far been so clearly defined as that of his recent predecessors. Other pressing public concerns have left him scant time for looking into municipal improvement projects. Mrs. Wilson, however, gave them much attention; and a hope expressed during her last illness so touched the heart of Congress as to bring about the enactment of some long-delayed legislation to abate the use of unwholesome alleys for the tenements of the poor.
In the ordinary conversation of Washington, one rarely hears Congress mentioned by name. The respective functions of its two chambers are so generally understood that it is common to distinguish between them: the Senate yesterday did so-and-so; something is about to occur in the House of Representatives. In speaking of the lawmakers collectively, the familiar phrase is “the gentlemen on the hill.” Washington has several hills, but “the” hill is by universal consent the one on which the Capitol stands.
To the visitor who knows the city only in its present aspect, the choice of this hill for the monumental building now crowning it seems most natural. This is not, however, the place originally considered for the purpose. James Madison favored Shuter’s Hill, an eminence a little west of Alexandria, now embraced in the tract set apart for George Washington Park. Thomas Jefferson supported Madison in this preference; but President Washington, feeling that Virginia had already had her full share of the honors in launching the new republic, insisted that the most important architecture at the seat of government should stand on the Maryland side of the Potomac. His view prevailed; and, when the sites of the principal public buildings were marked on L’Enfant’s plan of the city, that selected for the Capitol was the elevation which, besides being fairly central, commanded in its outlook, and was commanded by, the greatest area of country on both sides of the river.
Like almost everything else architectural in Washington, the Capitol is a pile of gradual growth, subjected to many changes of detail in the plans. Sketches were submitted in competition for a prize; the two competitors who came nearest to meeting the requirements, though adopted citizens of the United States, were respectively of French and English birth; and the drawings finally evolved from the general scheme of the one modified by the more acceptable ideas of the other were turned over to an Irishman to perfect and carry out. Most of the credit belongs, undoubtedly, to Doctor William Thornton, a draftsman by profession, who afterward became Superintendent of Patents. The material used was freestone from a neighboring quarry. Only the north or Senate end was far enough advanced by the autumn of 1800 to enable Congress to hold its short session there, and the disputes which arose over the succeeding stages of the work led President Jefferson to call in Benjamin H. Latrobe of Richmond, the first architect of already established rank who had had anything to do with it. Under his direction, the south end was made habitable by 1811; and the House of Representatives, which till then had been uncomfortably quartered in such odd places as it could find, took possession. There was no central structure connecting the Senate and House ends, but a roofed wooden passageway led from the one to the other. In this condition was the Capitol when, in 1814, the British invaders burned all of it that was burnable.