Metro:
The Capitol of the United States crowns Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and houses the legislative branch of government, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate. The 1792 competition for its design was won by Dr. William Thornton, a gifted amateur architect, with a Palladian-inspired scheme featuring a central shallow-domed rotunda flanked by the Senate (north) and House (south) wings. President George Washington laid the cornerstone in 1793, but construction proceeded slowly under a succession of architects, including Stephen Hallet (1793), George Hadfield (1795-98) and James Hoban (1798-1802), architect of the White House, who completed the Senate wing in 1800. Benjamin Latrobe, a major architect of early 19th-century America, took over in 1803; by 1811 he had renovated the Senate wing and completed the House wing. The Capitol was burned by British troops in 1814; in the following year Latrobe began its reconstruction and redesign. Charles BULFINCH, the brilliant Boston architect who succeeded him in 1818, completed the building, with only slight modifications of Latrobe's master plan, in 1830.
By 1850 it had become necessary to enlarge the building, and the Philadelphian Thomas U. Walter was commissioned to design and build the enormous (214-m/702-ft by 107-m/350-ft) present Capitol. Grandiose new House and Senate wings of white marble in Greek Revival style were added to the old sandstone building by 1859. Walter's awesome (82-m/270-ft) cast-iron dome, topped with Thomas Crawford's colossal (6-m/19.7-ft) statue, Armed Freedom (1855-62), was completed in 1863. The east front was extended 10 m (33 ft) in 1960 and faced with a white marble copy of the original sandstone facade. The interior of the Capitol is elaborately decorated with a profusion of statuary, murals, frescoes, and mosaics by such artists as Horatio Greenough, Randolph Rogers, and John Trumbull.
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