Charles Bulfinch

Statuary Hall, US Capitol, Washington, DC

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The National Statuary Hall, formerly the U.S. House of Representatives chamber in the Capitol, around 1900-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The scene in 2018:

This room in the United States Capitol was constructed between 1815 and 1819 as the House of Representatives chamber. However, the House had actually met here at this site since 1801, when a temporary structure was built here while the Capitol was still under construction. This was replaced by a permanent House chamber in 1807, but this was subsequently burned during the British invasion of Washington in 1814. It was soon rebuilt, though, with designs by architects Benjamin Henry Latrobe and Charles Bulfinch.

The room is semicircular, and shaped like an ancient amphitheater. It is surrounded on all sides by locally-quarried marble columns, which are topped by white marble Corinthian capitals that were imported from Italy. The original design of the room also included two statues, both of which are still here. One is located directly behind where this photo was taken from, and the other, Liberty and the Eagle, is visible above the columns in the center of the room. It was the work of sculptor Enrico Causici, and it features a female depiction of Liberty, holding the Constitution in her outstretched right hand. To her right is an eagle, and to the left is a snake on a column.

Several years after its completion, the House chamber became the subject of an 1823 painting by Samuel F. B. Morse, who had a successful career as a painter before turning his attention to telegraphy. His painting, included below, shows the view of the room from the left side, at approximately a right angle from where these two photos were taken. It is now on display a few blocks away from here at the National Gallery of Art, providing a rare glimpse into this room during the years that it was used by the House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives met here until 1857, when the present House chamber was completed. During this time, this room was the site of many important events. In the years before presidential inaugurations were consistently held outdoors, several such ceremonies were held here, including James Monroe (1821), John Quincy Adams (1825), Andrew Jackson (1833), and Millard Fillmore (1850). Both of James Madison’s inaugurations (1809 and 1813) were also held here, although these occurred before the postwar reconstruction of the chamber. In addition to being inaugurated here, this chamber was also the site of John Quincy Adams’s election to the presidency. None of the four candidates in the 1824 election had received a majority of the electoral votes, so it was left to the House to choose the president here.

Adams’s association with this room would ultimately go far beyond his highly-contested presidential election. Two years after his defeat for re-election in 1828, he became the only ex-president to be elected to the House of Representatives, and he would go on to serve here for nearly 17 years. It was also here that, in 1836, the House instituted the Gag Rule, which blocked discussion of any anti-slavery petitions. This was designed to silence northern abolitionists, particularly Adams, who became perhaps the most vocal opponent of the rule. It would eventually be repealed in 1844, thanks in large part to his efforts, and Adams continued to be be one of the most outspoken abolitionists in the House until his death in 1848. On February 21 of that year, he suffered a stroke while at his desk here in the House chamber, and he died two days later in the adjacent speaker’s room.

Among those present in the chamber when Adams collapsed was Abraham Lincoln, a freshman representative from Illinois. Although they had only been colleagues in the House for a year, Lincoln was selected to serve as a pallbearer at Adams’s funeral, which was also held here in the House chamber. This would prove to be a fitting selection, as Lincoln would eventually accomplish Adams’s lifelong goal of abolishing slavery. Today, plaques on the floor of this room mark the locations of both Lincoln’s desk – located in the rear of the room on the far right side of this scene – and Adams’s desk, which was also on the right, but near the front of the room.

Overall, this room was the site of some of the most important debates and acts of legislation during the antebellum period of American history. The Missouri Compromise was introduced and debated here in 1820, only a year after the room was completed, and it set the policy for the admission of new states for more than three decades. However, in 1854, only a few years before the House relocated to its current chamber, the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This law was hotly debated here on the floor of the House before eventually passing by a narrow margin, and it would prove to be one of the major controversies that ultimately led to the start of the Civil War.

The admission of new states was a considerable source of strife within the House of Representatives throughout the first half of the 19th century, but it also posed a more logistical problem for the House. When this room was completed in 1819, the country had 22 states, with a total of 187 representatives serving here. However, by 1857 there were 31 states, with plenty more potential states on the horizon, and the House had grown to 237 representatives. This overcrowding, combined with notoriously poor acoustics in the room, led Congress to expand the Capitol in the 1850s. On the exterior, the most noticeable changes were the addition of two new wings for new legislative chambers, and a new, larger dome in the center of the building. The current House chamber – located through the doors in the distant center of this scene – was completed in 1857, and the current Senate chamber was completed in 1859 on the opposite end of the building.

After the House moved out, there were several different proposals for re-using this room, including as an art gallery, as space for the Library of Congress, or dividing it into two floors of conference rooms. It would remain vacant for several years, though, with Congress likely being more preoccupied by the Civil War than by redesigning rooms in the Capitol. However, in 1864 this room was designated as the National Statuary Hall, and each state was invited to send two statues of prominent individuals from their history.

The first statue arrived here in 1870, but it would take another century before every state was represented by at least one statue, and it was not until 2005 that each state had two statues here. When the first photo was taken around the turn of the 20th century, the collection included about two dozen statues, eleven of which are visible in this photo. From left to right, these include Roger Sherman (CT), Jonathan Trumbull (CT), Peter Muhlenberg (PA), Ethan Allen (VT), Lewis Cass (MI), James Garfield (OH), William Allen (OH), Jacob Collamer (VT), Robert Fulton (PA), Nathaniel Greene (RI), and Roger Williams (RI).

Over time, as the collection of statues grew, this room became too overcrowded. The dozens of heavy statues also raised structural concerns, so many of them were ultimately relocated to other parts of the Capitol. Today, there are 38 here in Statuary Hall, although only three of the ones visible in the first photo are still in this room. Of these, only Lewis Cass is still visible from this angle, with his statue standing between the two columns on the left, only a few feet from where it stood a century earlier in the first photo. One of the statues from the first photo, William Allen, has been entirely removed from the Capitol; his statue was replaced in 2016 by one of Thomas Edison.

Overall, aside from rearranged statues, the Statuary Hall has not seen too many changes since the first photo was taken over a century ago. However, in 1976 it was partially restored to its early 19th century appearance, using Morse’s painting as a guide. This included the addition of curtains behind the columns, along with a replica of the original chandelier in the center of the room. As a result, the present-day appearance of Statuary Hall actually bears a better resemblance to the old House chamber than it did when the first photo was taken.

Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, Washington, DC

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The east front of the United States Capitol, during the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1861. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The Capitol in 2018:

The first photo was taken around the same time as the one in a previous post, but this one shows the view from further back, with the entire unfinished Capitol dome in view, along with the crowd that had assembled for Lincoln’s first inauguration. It was the culmination of the highly-contentious 1860 presidential election, which saw the splintering of the Democratic Party into regional factions. Lincoln won the four-way race amid threats of secession from the south, and by the time he was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, seven southern states had followed through on their plans.

Because of this, there was a great deal of uncertainty on the day that the first photograph was taken. The start of the Civil War was just over a month away, and there were still plenty of questions about whether the South would be allowed to peacefully secede, or if the newly-inaugurated president would send an army to stop them. Appropriately enough, the backdrop to this event is the unfinished dome of the Capitol. Begun six years earlier, this new dome was still very much a work in progress during Lincoln’s inauguration, and it seemingly represented the as yet unfinished work of uniting the northern and southern regions of the nation.

The Capitol building itself is actually significantly older than this dome, though. Construction began in 1793, and the Senate and House wings were completed in 1800 and 1811, respectively. However, the building was burned in 1814, during the War of 1812, and its reconstruction was not ultimately finished until 1826. At the time, the building was topped by a low dome, which is visible in the first photo of another previous post. As the country grew, though, so did the Capitol building, and two new wings were added in the 1850s. As a result, the old dome looked out of proportion to the old building, so construction began on the current one in 1855.

During the early 19th century, the Capitol became the primary site of presidential inaugurations. At first, these ceremonies were held indoors, in either the Senate of House chambers, but in 1829 Andrew Jackson became the first president to be inaugurated here on the East Portico. This started a tradition that, with few exceptions, continued into the late 20th century. Jimmy Carter’s 1977 inauguration was the last to be held here on the East Portico, and since 1981 the ceremony has – with the exception of Ronald Reagan’s 1985 inauguration in the Rotunda – been held on the West Portico, on the side of the building facing the National Mall and the Washington Monument.

Four years to the day after the first photo was taken, Lincoln’s second inauguration would also be held here on the East Portico. By then, the exterior of the dome had been completed, and Lincoln’s goal of reuniting the nation had likewise been largely accomplished, with the end of the Civil War only weeks away. However, less than a week after Lee’s surrender, and only 42 days into his second term, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who had actually attended the second inauguration here, and had later claimed that he could have killed Lincoln during the event if he had wanted to.

Today, more than 150 years after the first photo was taken, the East Portico does not appear to have changed much. However, it actually underwent a major expansion starting in 1958, when a new portico was built 32 feet 6 inches in front of the old one. Aside from being built of marble, as opposed to the sandstone of the original walls, this new portico was essentially a duplicate. The old walls remain intact inside the building, although the original columns were removed and now stand in the National Arboretum. The 1958 renovations also involved the removal of two statues that once flanked the east steps. On the left, mostly hidden from view in the first photo, was Luigi Persico’s Discovery of America, and on the right was Horatio Greenough’s The Rescue. Both of these statues featured particularly unflattering depictions of Native Americans, and neither have been put on public display since then.

The other significant addition to this part of the Capitol occurred in the early 2000s, when the Capitol Visitor Center was constructed here. Consisting of 580,000 square feet of floor space on three floors, this massive expansion is almost entirely hidden from view in this scene, as it is located directly under the plaza in front of the East Portico. From this angle, the only visible signs of this underground complex are several skylights, including one on the far left side of the scene.

Third Harrison Gray Otis House, Boston

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The Third Harrison Gray Otis House, at 45 Beacon Street in Boston, around 1860. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library

The house in 2017:


Harrison Gray Otis was a lawyer and politician, and one of the most prominent residents of Boston at the turn of the 19th century. Born in 1765 as a member of the prominent Otis family, he was a young boy when his uncle James became one of the leading anti-British patriots in the years leading up to the American Revolution. After graduating from Harvard in 1783, Harrison subsequently opened his law practice in Boston, and in 1796 he was appointed as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. That same year, he was elected to Congress, and served two terms from 1797 to 1801.

Otis would go on to serve in the state legislature from 1802 to 1817, and was elected to a term in the U.S. Senate from 1817 to 1822. A few years later, he finished his political career by serving as mayor of Boston from 1829 to 1832. However, despite his extensive political career, his greatest legacy in Boston has probably been his three houses on Beacon Hill, all of which are still standing today as some of the finest examples of residential Federal architecture in the country.

All three of his houses were designed by Charles Bulfinch, one of the nation’s most prominent architects of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The first house, completed in 1796, was built on Cambridge Street, but Otis only lived here for a few years before moving in 1800, to another new house on Mount Vernon Street, near the top of Beacon Hill. He did not live there for very long either, though, because his third house, seen here on Beacon Street, was completed in 1808.

When the house was completed, Beacon Hill was just starting to be developed as an upscale neighborhood for Boston’s elite, and Otis’s house occupied one of the most desirable spots, directly across from Boston Common. Although most of the houses here are townhouses, his was originally built as a freestanding home, with gardens to the right and behind it, and a driveway to the left. The house itself is considered to have been one of Charles Bulfinch’s finest works, and Otis was evidently satisfied with it, because he lived here until his death 40 years later in 1848.

Otis’s political career peaked during the time that he lived here, and this house saw several distinguished guests, including James Monroe, who stayed here during a visit to Boston in 1817, as well as Senator Henry Clay. With Beacon Hill becoming the city’s most desirable and exclusive neighborhood, though, property values rose to the point where Otis could no longer justifying having large gardens around his house. So, in 1831 he sold a 25-foot wide section of his garden to his neighbor, David Sears, who built an addition to his own house. This granite townhouse, which can be partially seen on the far right, was built for his daughter Anna and her husband William Amory, who was a prominent textile manufacturer. Two years later, Otis filled in the gap between the two houses by building 44 Beacon Street, directly adjacent to his own house, for his daughter Sophia and her husband, Andrew Ritchie.

By the time Harrison Gray Otis died in 1848, his formerly freestanding home had been mostly incorporated into the streetscape of Beacon Street. The only remnant of the gardens that once surrounded his home is the driveway on the left, which leads to a carriage house in the backyard. A rarity in Beacon Hill, this driveway is the only break in an otherwise continuous row of houses on Beacon Street between Walnut and Spruce Streets. When the first photo was taken about 12 years after his death, the house and its surroundings had already assumed its present-day appearance, and there is hardly any difference despite being taken over 150 years apart.

When the first photo was taken, the house was owned by brothers Samuel and Edward Austin, both of whom were merchants. Neither brother ever married, and after Samuel’s death, Edward continued to live here for many years, until his own death in 1898 at the age of 95. The property changed hands several more times in the first half of the 20th century, and by 1940 it was owned by the Boy Scouts, who used it as offices until 1954. Since 1958, it has been owned by the American Meteorological Society, and it is used as the organization’s headquarters. During this time, the interior was significantly renovated, but the exterior of the house has remained well-preserved, and it still stands as one of the finest homes in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

Old State House, Hartford, Connecticut

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The Old State House in Hartford, seen from the Main Street side around 1907, during its time as Hartford City Hall. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2016:

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The Old State House in Hartford is one of the oldest existing buildings in the city. It was completed in 1796, and its design is generally credited to prominent architect Charles Bulfinch as one of his early commissions. Just a few years later, he would design the present Massachusetts State House, and he would later play a role in designing the US Capitol.

At the time, Connecticut actually had two capital cities, with the legislature meeting alternately between Hartford and New Haven. It may seem somewhat unusual for one of the smallest, most densely-populated states in the country to have two capital cities, each complete with its own capitol building, but the arrangement was not unheard of. Similarly-sized New Jersey had two capitals in colonial times, and, not to be outdone despite its small size, Rhode Island had five capitals in the early 19th century, with the legislature rotating through each of the state’s five county seats.

Here in Connecticut, ease of transportation thanks to railroads meant that it was unnecessary to have redundant capitals just 35 miles apart, but the location of the capital city still carried significant symbolic value. In the end, Hartford won out over New Haven. In 1875, it was designated as the sole capital city, and three years later a new, much larger capitol building was completed at Bushnell Park.

When its days as a capitol ended, the old building became Hartford City Hall. It served in this role until 1915, when the current Municipal Building was completed. Since then, it has been threatened with demolition several times over the years, but it remains standing as a relic of Connecticut’s history, and it is listed as a National Historic Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.

First Harrison Gray Otis House, Boston

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The First Harrison Gray Otis House, on Cambridge Street in Boston, on October 23, 1911. Image courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

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The house in 2015:

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At the end of the 1700s, Cambridge Street was lined with the homes of wealthy Bostonians, including lawyer and politician Harrison Gray Otis. His house was designed by Charles Bulfinch and completed in 1796 while Otis was serving as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. Later that year, he was elected to Congress, where he served two terms in the House of Representatives.

The house is an excellent example of Federal architecture, designed by one of the most prominent American architects of the era, but Otis only lived here for less than five years. In 1800, Bulfinch designed a second home for him, on Mount Vernon Street on Beacon Hill, but again he only lived there for a few years before moving into his third and final Bulfinch-designed home in 1806, on Beacon Street across from Boston Common. Likewise, Otis changed jobs almost as frequently as he changed houses. After two terms in the House of Representatives, he served in the Massachusetts state legislature from 1802 to 1817, including as the state Senate President for several of those years. From 1817 to 1822, he served in the U.S. Senate, and then from 1829 to 1832 he finished his political career as the mayor of Boston.

All three of his houses are still standing today, but the first one here on Cambridge Street has seen a number of changes, as the two photographs show. During the 19th century it became a boarding house, and a one-story addition was built for storefronts. Other more minor alterations included the removal of the original Palladian window and the lunette window above it, and the addition of dormers on the roof, a storm porch at the front door, and a bay window on the second floor.

A few years after the first photo was taken, the house was purchased by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, which is now called Historic New England. They restored it and undid many of the 19th century alterations, and in 1924 the house was moved back 40 feet to its current location to allow for Cambridge Street to be widened. Since then, it has been restored further, and aside from serving as Historic New England’s headquarters, it is also open to the public as one of their many historic house museums. It is next to another historic landmark, the Old West Church, which was built just a few years after the house and can be seen on the right side of both photos.

Parkman House, Boston

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The Parkman House at Bowdoin Square in Boston, in 1880. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

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Bowdoin Square in 2015:

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The Bowdoin Square area was once a prominent residential neighborhood, and these two attached granite houses were built around 1816 by Samuel Parkman, a wealthy merchant who hired Charles Bulfinch to design them. Samuel Parkman’s daughter Sarah lived in the house to the left, along with her husband, Edward Blake, Jr., who died in 1817, shortly after they moved in. Sarah lived here until her death in 1847. Parkman himself lived in the house to the right until he died in 1824, and another daughter, Elizabeth, lived here with her husband, Robert Gould Shaw, until around 1840.

Both the Parkman and Shaw families were prominent in Boston’s 19th century upper class. Samuel Parkman’s grandson was Francis Parkman, a noted author and historian, and Robert Gould Shaw was one of the wealthiest men in the city. When he and his wife left this house in 1840, they moved to the other side of Beacon Hill, to a house overlooking Boston Common at the corner of Beacon and Joy Streets. By 1846, he had an estimated net worth of a million dollars, much of which he had inherited from his father-in-law. Shaw’s grandson and namesake, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, would go on to achieve fame as the commanding officer of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first all-black units to fight in the Civil War.

The two houses stood here at Bowdoin Square until the early 1900s, when they were demolished and replaced with a commercial building. This building is no longer standing either, nor is anything else from the 1880 photo. The entire West End section of the city, aside from a few buildings, was demolished in the late 1950s as part of an urban renewal project, similar to what was done at nearby Scollay Square around the same time, Even the road networks were changed, and today Bowdoin Square bears essentially no resemblance to its earlier appearance.