1825 Library Fire Inspires Changes on the West Front

Racing through the icy darkness at midnight nearly 200 years ago, on December 22, 1825, Representative Edward Everett ran across Capitol Hill toward a fire threatening to engulf the Library of Congress. The fire was in the top gallery of the Library, which was then a multistory room stretching across the entire center section of the U.S. Capitol.

Designed to reduce the risk of fire by Architect of the Capitol Charles Bulfinch, the Library was built of stone and cast iron with tile floors. Rather than including typical open fireplaces for heat, Bulfinch designed closed stoves so there would be no exposed flame in the room. However, Everett knew that the fire burning there now had an abundance of fast-burning fuel: shelves packed with books, plus floors and walkways covered in towering stacks of volumes and papers several feet high. Further, if the flames got into the ceiling, they would spread through the attic to the original Capitol Dome, then a wooden structure covered in copper. That could cause the entire Dome to crash down, aflame, into the newly finished Rotunda.

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Stoves designed by Bulfinch were used in the Library at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (1 & 2).

Everett, a professor of Greek literature and future president of Harvard, was an unlikely firefighter. But, as the chair of the House Committee on the Library, he must have been determined to preserve one of the Capitol's most beautiful rooms. The National Intelligencer had called it "the most beautiful apartment in the building. Its decorations are remarkably chaste and elegant, and the architecture of the whole displays a great deal of taste."

When the frantic clanging of a bell at the U.S. Capitol Building awakened Everett, it was little more than an hour after he and his wife had returned home from a dinner party. He was joined in his mad dash by neighbors who had also been jarred from sleep by the sound, including Representative Daniel Webster and Representative Sam Houston.

Sounding the alarm were a Capitol policeman and the librarian of Congress, George Watterson, who had discovered the blaze but had no water to fight it. Someone among the responding crowd found a fire engine in a shed, but the door was locked and nobody had the key. The crowd tore off the doors, hauled the engine to the Capitol and stopped the fire before it burned into the ceiling.

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View of the Library showing towering stacks of books and papers throughout the room (3).

Bulfinch's design prevented the fire from spreading, but it couldn't prevent human error. The cause of the fire was a candle that a patron left lit in the upper gallery that went unnoticed when the Library was closed for the day.

Although there wasn't great damage to the room or its contents, legislators knew that a catastrophe had barely been avoided. They looked more closely at fire dangers in the Capitol and found that the greatest risk was literally beneath their feet. The winding, windowless basements of the Senate and House wings of the building held vast stores of fuel for the Capitol's furnaces, stoves and fireplaces. The spaces were a maze that would make it impossible to fight a fire, should one ignite.

Congress directed Bulfinch to create proposals for new fuel storage facilities for the Capitol. The solution that Congress approved called for construction of a terrace separated from the west side of the Capitol by a distance. Firewood and coal would be stored in vaults below the terrace. Between the terrace and the Capitol would be courtyards where privies would be located. In the days before running water, it would be nice to be able to have these near the building, but outside it.

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This engraving (4) and model show how the Capitol’s West Front looked before and after the addition of the terrace.

The terrace also solved an architectural problem on the West Front where the base of the four-story tall center of the building was a full story below the base of the three-story wings on either side of it. The sunken extra story of the central block was built to create more office and committee space for Congress. However, it created the awkward appearance that the wings hovered over the ground line of the building.

When it was completed in 1827, the terrace masked the lower center section, so the entire building appeared to be three stories tall with a uniform ground line. The courtyard privies abutted the foundations of the Senate and House wings. Doorways cut through the foundation walls allowed members of Congress access to the privies without having to step outside and be exposed to the elements.

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The U.S. Capitol’s West Front in 2024.

On that night in 1825, as Representative Everett raced through the frigid night to the Library, he was likely envisioning a disaster. He couldn't have imagined that the outcome would instead be a solution that improved the comfort, safety, utility and appearance of the Capitol for everyone who worked in or visited it.

References

1. Bulfinch, C. (1824). Design drawing for stoves in the Library at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. , 1824. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2009630646/.

2. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. (1832). View of Congress Library ... Capitol. Washington. Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a3f00ad0-c5ed-012f-3676-58d385a7bc34.

3. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. (1897). Library of Congress, showing three levels crowded with stacks of books and newspapers. [Photograph] Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017646700/.

4. Goodacre, W. (1830-1832). The Capitol Building, Washington. [Engraving] Retrieved from the Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives, https://history.house.gov/Collection/Detail/30530.