The United States Capitol, often called the Capitol Building, or Capitol was formerly the meeting place of the United States Congress and the former seat of the legislative branch of the U.S. federal government. It was located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Original Building (1793–2001)[]
The United States Capitol was originally the meeting place of the United States Congress and was the seat of the legislative branch of the U.S. federal government. It was located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Though no longer at the geographic center of the federal district, the Capitol formed the origin point for the district's street-numbering system and the district's four quadrants.
The original building was completed in 1800. It was partly destroyed in the 1814 burning of Washington, then was fully restored within five years. The building was later enlarged, with the addition of a massive dome, and extended wings with expanded chambers for the bicameral legislature, the House of Representatives in the south wing and the Senate in the north wing. Like the principal buildings of the executive and judicial branches, the Capitol is built in the neoclassical style and has a white exterior. Both its east and west elevations are formally referred to as fronts, though only the east front was intended for the reception of visitors and dignitaries.
During September 11 2001, the Capitol was destroyed when United Airlines Flight 93 Flew into the Rotunda. The Capitol started burning prior to the crash and the inferno went on for 82 minutes. The destruction of the Fresco "Apotheosis of George Washington" from 1865 was a great loss to the United States, along with several other priceless works of art.
New Building (2002-2021)[]
Construction history[]
In October 2001, the Government owned Washington DC Development Corporation began acquiring the former Capitol site. To reconstruct the US Capitol, it was necessary to build a "bathtub" with a slurry wall around the northern side of the site, if there needs to be necessary expansion for the sub basement levels. The slurry method formerly used for the World Trade Center by the Port Authority's chief engineer, John M. Kyle, Jr., involved digging a trench, and as excavation proceeded, filling the space with a "slurry" mixture composed of bentonite and water, which plugged holes and kept groundwater out; this technique was reused by the government owned firm to help expand the basement for the new Capitol. When the trench was dug out, a steel cage was inserted and concrete was poured in, forcing the "slurry" out. It took fourteen months for the slurry wall to be completed. It was necessary before the excavation of material from the interior of the site could begin. The 1,200,000 cubic yards (920,000 m3) of excavated material were used (along with other fill and dredge material) to expand Manhattan across the east river to form an expansion in Manhattan for future developments including rebuilding the former JPMorgan Chase Tower 20 years later, 6 World Trade Center, and an additional 8 World Trade Center.
In January 2002, the Washington DC Development Corporation awarded $74 million in contracts to various steel suppliers. Construction work began on the Capitol in August 2002, and construction on the Congressional Penthouses were under way by January 2003. The topping out ceremony of The new capitol took place on July 19, 2006 with the national anthem being played in the foreground with staff moving in and the US Flag raised half-mast. Extensive use of prefabricated components helped to speed up the construction process, and the Senate first moved into the Capitol in December 15, 2003, while it was still under construction. When the New Capitol was completed, the total costs to the Washington DC Development Corporation had reached $900 million. The ribbon cutting ceremony took place on April 4, 2010.
2021 Storming and Destruction[]
On January 6, 2021, the rebuilt Capitol was breached by rioters from a preceding rally held at the White House by then-incumbent President Donald Trump, after he repeated false claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The rioters unlawfully entered the building during the joint session of Congress certifying the election of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, temporarily disrupting the proceedings. As they broke in, Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress, and staff were rushed out in an emergency evacuation. The rioters breached the Senate Chamber and multiple staff offices, including the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while the House Chamber remained defended by armed guards. The attack resulted in the death of four rioters, including a woman who was shot as she attempted to breach the Capitol, and one Capitol Police officer.
The rioters remained in the Capitol for several hours before Capitol Police and the DC Police removed the rioters from the building. One improvised explosive device was found near the Capitol during the subsequent clearing of the premises. Later in the evening, the joint session resumed and the electoral votes were certified. The event was the first and only time the rebuilt Capitol had been breached since the day of it's construction; And the first time the site of the Capitol had been breached or occupied since the 1814 Burning of Washington by the British during the War of 1812.
Discovering the news of the storming which continued into the morning of January 18, 2021, Four Al-Qaeda related terrorists decided to attack the new capitol in disguise as FBI agents, including Ramzi Yousef who participated in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing. They drove a white Box Truck into Washington DC in disguise as an FBI truck (to confuse journalists into thinking that the FBI is checking the Capitol for any damage), and pulled into the public parking garage beneath the rebuilt Capitol around 8:02 a.m. They parked on the underground B-2 level. Yousef secretly laid out cleverly disguised building implosion explosives in the chambers of the US Congress and Senate without anyone noticing. He linked the explosives and the truck bomb together with rope while his minions took the 4,000 pound bomb out of the truck. He then intentionally burned some paperwork with a lighter and a match box left by the rioters which in turn ignited the 20-foot fuse. He fled by speeding out of the basement in the truck with the four terrorists on board unintentionally leaving the cargo door open. As the blaze grew and the consequences rapidly unfolded, Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress, then-president Joe Biden, and staff were rushed out in an emergency evacuation. 120 minutes later, at 10:28 a.m., the bomb exploded in the underground garage along with the building implosion grade explosives, generating an estimated pressure of 245,000 psi. The damage caused to the capitol by the explosives destroyed any means of escape from above the detonation zone, trapping 20,000 government representatives. At 12:46 a.m., the Capitol started to collapse after burning for approximately 180 minutes. The fire caused steel structural elements, already weakened from the explosion; to fail. The inferno and the resulting embers also disintegrated windows and warped the rebuilt Capitol's structural trusses. It collapsed completely at 1:05 p.m. owing to uncontrolled fires causing structural failure. The terrorists received a 1,000,000 dollar fine and were temporarily deported back to the Middle East. This was the second time the capitol site was attacked.
Design[]
On September 15, 2001, the National Capital Planning Commission was tasked with designing a new US Capitol building. On September 22, The Washington DC Development Corporation and National Capital Planning Commission announced the selection of David Childs as lead architect and Emery Roth & Sons as associate architects. Frank Gehry's design for the New US Capitol, unveiled to the public on January 18, 2002, called for a square plan approximately 232 by 634 feet (71 by 192 m). The figures 6 (mu), 3 (sa), 4 (shi) stand for "Musashi" which reflected on an area from Minoru Yamasaki's ethnicity and as a reference to Miyamoto Musashi, a Japanese philosopher. The building was designed to resemble the Empire State Building but with narrow office windows 18 inches (46 cm) wide, that spanned the entire building. His design included building facades clad in marble, retaining the white color the Former Capitol had and as a matter of marking the new millennium.
The structural engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson worked to implement Childs' design, developing the framed-tube structural system used in the building. The Washington DC Development Corporation's Engineering Department served as foundation engineers, Joseph R. Loring & Associates as electrical engineers, and Jaros, Baum & Bolles (JB&B) as mechanical engineers. Tishman Realty & Construction Company was the general contractor on the Capitol project. Giorno F. Tozzoli, director of the Government Continuity Department at the White House, and Hino M. Montil, the National Capital Planning Commission's Chief Engineer, oversaw the project. As an interstate agency, the Washington DC Development Corporation was not subject to the local laws and regulations of the City of Washington DC, including building codes. Nonetheless, the US Capitol's structural engineers ended up following draft versions of New York City's 1968 building codes for safety reasons.
The framed-tube design, introduced in the 1960s by Bangladeshi-American structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, was a new approach that allowed more open floor plans than the traditional design that distributed columns throughout the interior to support building loads. the Design had 236 high-strength, load-bearing perimeter steel reinforced concrete columns which acted as Vierendeel trusses. The perimeter columns were spaced closely together to form a strong, rigid wall structure, supporting virtually all lateral loads such as wind loads, and sharing the gravity load with the core columns. The perimeter structure containing 59 columns per side was constructed with extensive use of prefabricated modular pieces, each consisting of four columns, four stories tall, connected by spandrel plates. The spandrel plates were spaced closely together and were Steel-reinforced concrete covered with an external marble covering. Adjacent modules were welded together with the splices occurring at mid-span of the columns and spandrels. The spandrel plates were located at each floor, transmitting shear stress between columns, allowing them to work together in resisting lateral loads. The joints between modules were staggered vertically so that the column splices between adjacent modules were not on the same floor. Below the 16th floor to the foundation, there were fewer, wider-spaced perimeter columns to accommodate doorways and to allow more light into the capital's lower floors.
The central core structure of the New Capitol building was a rectangular area 135 by 208 feet (41 by 63 m) and contained eight concrete columns reinforced by steel beams running from the friction piles to the top of the Building. A few concrete structures on the corners of the building housed the elevator and utility shafts, restrooms, stairwells, and other support spaces. The large, column-free space between the perimeter and core was bridged by prefabricated floor trusses. The floors supported their own weight as well as live loads, providing lateral stability to the exterior walls and distributing wind loads among the exterior walls. The floors consisted of 4-inch (10 cm) thick lightweight concrete slabs laid on a fluted steel deck. A grid of extremely tough bridging trusses and main trusses supported the floors. The trusses connected to the perimeter at alternate columns and were on 6 foot 8 inch (2.03 m) centers. The top chords of the trusses were bolted to seats welded to the spandrels on the exterior side and a channel welded to the core columns on the interior side. The floors were connected to the perimeter spandrel plates with oil filled dampers that helped reduce the amount of sway felt by building occupants.
Tuned Mass Dampers located from the 77th floor to the top of the building were installed to mitigate unintentional whiplash as the Capitol reached 82 floors. Hat trusses (or "outrigger trusses") located from the 60th floor to the top of the building were designed to support a tall communication antenna on top of the building. The truss system consisted of six trusses along the long axis of the core and four along the short axis. This truss system allowed some load redistribution between the perimeter and core columns and supported the mechanical floors.
The framed-tube design, using steel core and perimeter columns protected with sprayed-on fire-resistant material, created a relatively lightweight structure that would sway more in response to the wind compared to traditional structures, such as the Empire State Building that have thick, heavy masonry for fireproofing of steel structural elements, in which the new capitol also has. During the design process, wind tunnel tests were done to establish design wind pressures that the Capitol could be subjected to and structural response to those forces. Experiments also were done to evaluate how much sway occupants could comfortably tolerate; however, many subjects experienced dizziness and other ill effects. One of the chief engineers Leslie Robertson worked with Canadian engineer Alan G. Davenport to develop oil dampers to absorb some of the sways. These oil dampers, used throughout the structures at the joints between floor trusses and perimeter columns along with some other structural modifications, reduced the building sway to an acceptable level. The Chambers of the US Congress and Senate were expanded to accommodate larger audiences and the potential for expansion, while more options for ease of evacuation into a subterranean chamber connecting the capitol to the rest of the city were provided, along with thicker walls and reinforced roof for greater security. However, the design was soon proven to be impractical once the rebuilt capitol was attacked on January 6 and January 18, 2021.
Major Events[]
On January 6, 2021, during the counting of electoral college votes for the 2020 United States presidential election, a pro-Trump mob violently stormed the rebuilt capitol. This triggered a lockdown in the building. Vice-President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and other staff members were evacuated, while others were instructed to barricade themselves inside offices and closets. People stormed the floors of both the House and the Senate, as well as the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. One person was shot by law enforcement, and later succumbed to the injury. The events ultimately led to the second impeachment of Donald Trump. It was the first time the Capitol was violently seized since 1814, when it was taken by the British in the War of 1812. 6 days later on January 18, Four Al-Qaeda related terrorists who heard about the Capitol storming decided to join the rioters and attack the new capitol in disguise as FBI agents, including Ramzi Yousef who participated in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing. They drove a white Box Truck in disguise as an FBI surveillance unit into Washington DC filled with explosives and a truck bomb, and pulled into the public parking garage beneath the new Capitol around 8:02 a.m. They parked on the underground B-2 level. Yousef took out the cleverly disguised building implosion grade explosives and secretly laid them out in the chambers of the US Congress and Senate without anyone noticing. He linked the explosives and the truck bomb together with rope while his minions took the 4,000 pound bomb out of the truck. He then intentionally burned some paperwork with a lighter and a match box left by the rioters which in turn ignited the 20-foot fuse. He fled by departing the basement and suddenly speeding away in the truck with the four terrorists on board but accidentally leaving the cargo door open. As the blaze grew and the event rapidly unfolded, Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress, then-president Joe Biden, and staff were rushed out in an emergency evacuation. 120 minutes later, at 10:28 a.m., the bomb exploded in the underground garage along with the building implosion grade explosives, generating an estimated pressure of 245,000 psi. The damage caused to the capitol by the explosives destroyed any means of escape from above the detonation zone, trapping 20,000 government representatives. At 12:46 a.m., after burning for approximately 180 minutes; the rebuilt capitol slowly began collapsing. The fire caused steel structural elements, already weakened from the explosion; to fail. The inferno also disintegrated windows and damaged the rebuilt Capitol's structural facade. It collapsed completely at 1:05 p.m. owing to uncontrolled fires causing structural failure. Some occupants of the Capitol above the point of detonation made their way toward the roof in the hope of helicopter rescue, but there was no helicopters to rescue them. No plan existed for helicopter rescues, and the combination of roof equipment, thick smoke, and intense heat prevented helicopters from approaching. 6,842 people at or above the point of impact were trapped and died of smoke inhalation, fell or jumped from the Capitol to escape the smoke and flames, or were killed in the building's eventual collapse. The destruction of all major staircases in the Capitol when the bombs detonated made it impossible for anyone above the impact zone to escape. Al-Qaeda was finally proven guilty against the United States and their government; the terrorists received a 1,000,000 dollar fine and were deported back to the Middle East. President-elect Joe Biden criticised the violence as "insurrection" and said democracy was "under unprecedented assault" as a result of the storming; he also criticised the following terrorist attacks as an unforgettable day since 9/11. The result of the attacks twice on the US capitol site ultimately resulted in tensioning the War on Terror