Capitol Building

The United States Capitol has stood at the center of Washington since the 1790s, and GoDC has spent years digging into its history. These posts cover everything from the Capitol’s construction and the British burning of 1814 to the dome’s completion during the Civil War and the debates, ceremonies, and controversies that have played out inside ever since.

The Capitol in 1900, Seen From the Smithsonian Castle

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Looking toward the west side of the United States Capitol building, a panoramic view of the city of Washington, D.C. shows the Mall area in the foreground before the railroad tracks were removed. A train is visible on the tracks. The domed structure in front of the Capitol is the Botanic Garden original octagonal greenhouse of 1859 and behind it the central pavilion added after the Civil War. The buildings were razed in 1932. The Botanic Garden was on a site previously occupied by the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences in Washington, D.C.

A photograph from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, taken from the Castle around 1900, shows the National Mall as a working industrial yard: the old Botanic Garden greenhouses in the foreground, Baltimore and Potomac Railroad tracks cutting across the grass, the Capitol on the horizon. Within a few years the McMillan Plan would erase all of it.

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