“The new building on Capitol Hill preparing for the accommodation of Congress, is in such a state of forwardness, that it is expected to be finished early in November. The spacious room for the House of Representatives has been finished for several weeks. The Senate-room has beenplaisteredfor some time.”
“The new building on Capitol Hill preparing for the accommodation of Congress, is in such a state of forwardness, that it is expected to be finished early in November. The spacious room for the House of Representatives has been finished for several weeks. The Senate-room has beenplaisteredfor some time.”
Congress took possession of the new house, December 4, 1815. The first day a communication was received from the citizens who voluntarily erected the building for the temporary accommodation of Congress. The building cost $30,000; $5,000 of which had been expended on objects necessary for the accommodation of Congress, which would be useless when they vacated the house. Therefore the proprietors declared they would be satisfied with $5,000 in money, and a rent of $1,650 per annum with cost of insurance. Niles’Registerwent on to say:
“The spot where this large and commodious building was erected was a garden on the fourth of July last; the bricks ofwhich it is built were clay, and the timber used in its construction was growing in the woods on that day.”
“The spot where this large and commodious building was erected was a garden on the fourth of July last; the bricks ofwhich it is built were clay, and the timber used in its construction was growing in the woods on that day.”
The building thus expeditiously erected, was used as the Capitol for several years. In front of this building, James Monroe was inaugurated with great brilliancy, March 4, 1817. In the winter of 1833-4, Luigi Persico occupied a room in this house as a studio. There in plaster stood the group, which now in marble occupies the south block in front of the main entrance to the Rotunda known as “Columbus and the Indian.” Says the Hon. B. B. French:
“How well I remember theartisticenthusiasm with which he described to me his conception of Columbus holding up, with his right hand, the new world which he had discovered!ThereTherehe stands, in marble, to-day, with that same “new world,” in the form of a huge nine-pin ball, or bomb-shell, elevated in his right hand, to the vast apparent admiration or fear of the crouching squaw at his side! What the squaw is there for, or what she is doing, has never yet been satisfactorily decided!”
“How well I remember theartisticenthusiasm with which he described to me his conception of Columbus holding up, with his right hand, the new world which he had discovered!
ThereTherehe stands, in marble, to-day, with that same “new world,” in the form of a huge nine-pin ball, or bomb-shell, elevated in his right hand, to the vast apparent admiration or fear of the crouching squaw at his side! What the squaw is there for, or what she is doing, has never yet been satisfactorily decided!”
The next mutation of this historic house was into the eminently Washingtonian one of a fashionable boarding-house. It was first kept by a Mrs. Lindenberger, afterwards by a Mr. Henry Hill, and was always a favorite abode of Southern Members of Congress. John C. Calhoun, while a Senator from South Carolina, died in this house. It was at one time occupied by the famous Ann Royal, who with her factotum Sally Brass used it as the publishing house of her feared and famous publications “The Huntress” and “Paul Pry.”
Mrs. Royal inaugurated black-mailing journalism at an early day. She was the widow of a Revolutionary officer,who, reduced to the necessity of earning her living, chose a very malicious way of doing it. She kept what she called the Black Book, in which she recorded descriptions of the persons and characters of conspicuous residents of the city. She canvassed the city for subscribers to her publications, and whoever refused was threatened with a place in the Black Book. So fearfully and effectually was this threat carried out, but few had the temerity to refuse her requests. If such a daring mortal was found, the breakfast-tables of Washington were, the next morning, regaled with a portrayal whose impudence and audacity was only equalled by its shrewdness and sharpness. All who gave her money were sure of adulation, while those who refused it were equally sure of being defamed, without regard to truth.
She was feared by all mankind, from the highest functionary in the Government to the remotest clerk in the departments. “Few refused to comply with her demands, and clerks, who saw her approach, would not disdain to seek a friendly hiding-place.” I believe she printed her papers with her own hands, and they were afterwards peddled about the town by her female man, Sally Brass.
During the War of the Rebellion this building perfectly swarmed with prisoners. Not only soldiers from the Rebel army, and undoubted culprits, but also hundreds of citizens, arrested on the faintest suspicion, were incarcerated within its walls. Any one suspected of having given comfort to the enemy, of having interfered with military discipline, or of having defrauded the Government in the remotest way, was hurried off to the Old Capitol Prison. It was a small American Bastile, and itis well, perhaps, that its walls cannot tell all or aught of the oppression and outrage which transpired within them. In its yard stood the just gallows whereon Wirz was hung for the tortures which he inflicted on Union prisoners at Andersonville. Others were also executed here during the war.
Soon after the close of the war, Mr. George T. Brown, then Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, bought the property and proceeded to transmute the Old Capitol Prison into the three elegant mansions which now occupy its ground.
With this famous house must close my chapter on the Historic Homes and Haunts of Washington. To write minutely of them all would require a volume. Full detail is here impossible, but no one of the most famous has been omitted.