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Walter's workload increased further in 1851 when a fire gutted the portion of the building
housing the Library of Congress. Other difficulties also stood in his way. The building's origi-
nal sandstone had deteriorated significantly. So for his restoration, he went with marble from
Maryland and Massachusetts.
The ghost of a worker killed when he fell from the dome while building the Capitol has
been reported floating around the rotunda carrying a tray of tools.
The ghost of a worker sealed alive into the walls of the Capitol has been reported in the
Senate chamber.
On one occasion, a guard reported that the statues in the rotunda came to life and moved
around the room. The sighting of the spirit of a black cat in the basement has been known to
precede national tragedies like assassinations and stock market crashes. The same thing is said
of a spirit cat in the basement of the White House. It is unknown if this is the same phantom, or
a confusion of the tales. The ghost of a soldier has been seen in the rotunda. He salutes, then
vanishes.
• The cornerstone of the Capitol was laid 18 September 1793 by President George Wash-
ington.
• Running water was installed in 1832.
• Gaslights were installed in the 1840s.
• Electric lights were installed in the 1880s.
• The first elevator was installed in 1874.
• The ceilings of the House and Senate chambers are stainless steel covered with plaster.
• Before there was a capitol in Washington, DC, congress met in Philadelphia, Pennsyl-
vania; Baltimore, Maryland; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; York, Pennsylvania; Princeton, New Jer-
sey; Annapolis, Maryland; Trenton, New Jersey; and New York.
• During the Civil War, the Capitol building was used as a military barracks, a hospital,
and a bakery.
• The capitol is 751 feet high, four inches long and 350 feet wide.
• It is 288 feet tall.
• There are 540 rooms with 658 windows and 850 doorways.
• During renovation in the 1980s more than 30 layers of paint had to be removed.
• Flags have flown over the eastern and western fronts of the building 24 hours a day
since World War I.
• The Capitol grounds were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New
York's Central Park.
• There are more than one hundred types of plants on the Capitol grounds.
• More than 30 states have sent ceremonial trees to be planted there.
• 7,837 plants were planted in the first major organization of the Capitol grounds. Many
were stolen, vandalized, or eaten by roaming cattle.
• 1969 – Guards are posted at the capitol for the first time.
• June 2001 – A 140-year-old mystery has been solved. William D. Mohr has managed to
decode the journal of Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, an Army engineer who chronicled the po-
litical battles behind the construction and expansion of the U.S. Capitol. Meigs kept his notes in
Pitman shorthand, which fell out of favor not long after. Until now modern scholars have been
unable to read the notes because there is no one left who can read Pitman shorthand. Mohr's
translation will be published by the Government Printing office.
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