WHEN GEORGE WASHINGTON chose a plan for the U.S. Capitol in 1793, the promised building seemed destined to last. Yet it was a welter of problems. It was too small to accommodate all of the government bodies crammed under its roof: the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the offices of the Vice President, and the commissioner of public buildings as well as the House and Senate ranks. The Senate chambers were sweltering in the summer, and in the winter dignitaries wrapped themselves in shawls to ward off the cold. The House’s problems were even more acute: the horrible acoustics made the chamber a “perfect Babel of sounds,” groaned one congressional investigator.
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