Some 19th-century press reports refer to the “Capitol Prison” or “Old Capitol Jail.” Actually, this brick building wasn’t administered by Congress, and was located a block east of the U.S. Capitol on the grounds of the modern Supreme Court Building. For much of its existence, the structure was not even a jail: Congress met there from late 1815 to 1819 as the Capitol underwent repairs after the British attack in 1814. At other times, it was a boarding house and a school. But during the Civil War the federal government used it as a prison to incarcerate spies (such as Mary Greenhow Lee), Confederate soldiers, and troublesome southern sympathizers. It was torn down in the 20th century to make way for the U.S. Supreme Court.
No evidence suggests that any room in the Capitol was ever designated for use as a jail. The handful of individuals the House has found to be in contempt and, thus, detained, were almost certainly held temporarily in the offices of the Sergeant at Arms, locked in committee anterooms, or put under guard at local hotels.
However, at least one individual—Hallet Kilbourn, a well-to-do real estate speculator—was remanded to the District of Columbia’s Common Jail. Kilbourn’s case provides an amusing and historically important example of an uncooperative witness.
In 1876, during the first session of the 44th Congress (1875–1877), the House created a select committee to investigate Jay Cooke & Company, a Philadelphia-based bank that failed spectacularly during the Panic of 1873. The U.S. was a major creditor and lost considerable money. The investigation of the “Select Committee on the Real Estate Pool and the Jay Cooke Indebtedness” stoked already inflamed public opinion in a presidential election year. The committee subpoenaed Kilbourn, manager of the bank’s highly speculative real estate scheme. When Kilbourn refused to answer committee questions or supply documents, the full House held him in contempt and turned him over to the Sergeant at Arms, John G. Thompson, who locked him up in the D.C. Common Jail.
When the Sergeant at Arms refused to pay the bill out of public funds, the manager of the privately-run House Restaurant sued Kilbourn for the cost and hired the lawyer Belva Ann Lockwood to argue the case before the D.C. circuit court. Separately, Kilbourn filed a lawsuit against Thompson for false imprisonment that went to the Supreme Court and became an important case limiting Congress’s contempt powers against private individuals.
In the end, though, the unpaid food tab case against Kilbourn was dismissed for lack of evidence, and the House Restaurant appears to have eaten the bill.
Sources: William C. Allen, History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001): 107–108; Congressional Record, House, 44th Cong., 1st sess. (28 March 1876): 2008–2020; Kermit L. Hall, ed., Oxford Companion to the United States Supreme Court, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005): 560; New York Times, January 7, 1878; New York Times, November 1, 1883; Washington Post, January 25, 1881.