by
Art on January 24, 2020
Carpets have played an important role in interior design for both private and public buildings. Over two centuries, flooring decisions in the House have swung back and forth between form (symbolism, aesthetics, and glamour) and function (practicality, cost, and durability).
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Two Champ Clarks stand side by side. The Speaker on the right is a near-perfect replica of the Speaker on the left—except for his ghostly white pallor and his abrupt ending below the chest.
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Photographs from the House Collection capture the fun of snowball fights outside the Capitol, a tradition for House and Senate Pages.
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Congressional mobile offices emerged at the intersection of U.S. politics and love for automobiles.
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“Representative Ruth Bryan Owen has designed a handbag for business women,” the
Chicago Daily Tribune reported. In 1931, the Congresswoman’s pocketbook made the news. Her choice of accessory became a subtle statement about gender expectations in Congress.
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Sixty-five years ago, four members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party opened fire on the House Chamber from the visitors’ gallery, wounding five Members, and causing mayhem across the Capitol. In the midst of the terror, others on the floor responded by assisting those wounded in the attack. Photographs snapped in the aftermath captured these efforts, including an iconic image of three young House Pages carrying a wounded Member down the steps of the Capitol. Perhaps more than any other image, that photo came to embody both the violence and the solemnity of the day.
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In the early 1920s, one Member of Congress flipped and looped over the Capitol in a biplane. But after famous pilot Charles Lindbergh took Representatives up for a ride in 1928, aviation soared in the Washington imagination.
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Representative John Philip Hill tried very hard to get arrested by the Commissioner of Prohibition.
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Doughnuts have long been a favorite Washington breakfast. Crullers cooked up debate both on and off the House Floor.
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The Congressman stuck both index fingers down into his cowboy boot and yanked it up under his pant leg, getting ready for another day at the office.
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During a Joint Meeting honoring the bicentennial of Congress in 1989, Minority Leader Robert Michel suggested that what Congress needed during the celebration was “not more congressional prose, but the fiery, living truth of great poetry.”
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Board of Education. Doghouse. Cabinet Room. Sanctum sanctorum. Or, as Speaker Sam Rayburn modestly called his tiny hideaway where informal legislating happened, “the little room.”
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