Claude William Chambers

Transcription

They came to the House Chamber. Easily the largest room in the Capitol. One of the largest rooms in America. Magnificent room with Corinthian columns and draperies swaged between the columns. A rather weak effort to control annoying echoes. The ceiling was painted and highly decorated. But also the ceiling had 100 skylights. This was a legacy from Thomas Jefferson who adored skylights. And he made the architect install skylights in the ceiling of the House Chamber recalling his love of skylights which he first got when he was our Minister to France where he first saw skylights over a wheat market in Paris called the Halle aux Bl's. And the Halle aux Bl's had a dome. And this dome had wooden ribs. But between the ribs were these continuous ribbons of glass that allowed sunlight to penetrate down into this huge wheat market. And Jefferson was entranced. He said it was the most beautiful thing on earth. He absolutely adored the idea of a dome with alternating skylights. Ultimately, he planned three buildings in Washington that have this kind of dome. But the only one that actually got built was the ceiling over the House Chamber. And this dome caused the architect a great deal of anxiety because Jefferson wanted these continuous ribbons of glass. And the glass would be lapped like shingles. And Jefferson said, Oh, if you see this, it's the most magnificent thing. There is nothing in the world to compare with the beauty of this kind of ceiling. He said, It will be the one thing that will make this room the most beautiful room in the world. Latrobe, being an architect and being sort of less of a romantic about the idea than Jefferson was, reminded Jefferson that the skylights would break during hail storms. That condensation from the skylights would drip water on the heads of the members of Congress. And that snow being shoveled off of the skylights during the winter would cause breakage. So, this was a very impractical thing and we should not be doing this. It's O.K. for a wheat market in Paris. Who cares if there's some dripping on a wheat market? But when you've got the nation's legislators sitting at desks and tables in a room below, you cannot afford risking dripping water on the heads. Because if they do, they will never support any of your programs. And Latrobe tried to convince Jefferson to abandon this idea. Jefferson was very tenacious. He held on to this idea. Latrobe thinking, and scheming, and trying to figure out a way to accommodate Jefferson's desire for a ceiling, or a dome over the House chamber based on the Halle aux Bl's experience, but to avoid the practical problems, he came up with this idea. That instead of having a continuous ribbon of glass that were lapped like shingles, he would have just one sheet of glass as the backside of coffers. Coffers are the indentations, the sort of the box-like indentations of the dome, and are very distinctive. And one part, one ribbon where the rib of the dome was located, that would be paneled and there would be little roses, plaster roses, or maybe painted roses in each one. Very decorative, very nice. The next one over would, instead of having a solid back, would have a glass back. But it would be independent. You would have five of them. And they would get increasingly small as you go up. But the important thing is that they could be covered with one sheet of glass. So you didn't have joints. You didn't have glass butting up against glass. You had glass held in a frame. And this was able to accommodate the general idea of this ribbon of glass in the ceiling, but avoid the problems that Latrobe anticipated. Jefferson loved the idea. He loved the idea. He said actually this has the potential of being even more beautiful because it's more original than the Parisian example.