Identifier: picturesquewashi00moor (find matches)
Title: Picturesque Washington: pen and pencil sketches of its scenery, history, traditions, public and social life, with graphic descriptions of the Capitol and Congress, the White House, and the government departments ..
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors: Moore, Joseph West
Subjects: Washington (D.C.)
Publisher: Providence, J.A. & R.A. Reid
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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stics, is a happy circumstance for the worthyfellowship of fault-finders, who would otherwise have to hang them-selves from the galleries in despair. The congressmen who used itfound it was a badly constructed hall for public speaking, as it hadvery provoking echoes, and at certain points a whisper scarcely audi-ble to the ear into which it was breathed, would resound over theentire hall. But with all its bad acoustic properties, many of themost eloquent and effective speeches ever heard in the halls of Con-gross have been delivered in this old legislative chamber, by renownedstatesmen, whose names will live forever in the annals of the Republic. Under the arch near the dome is a large plaster figure of Liberty,by Causici, and beneath it is the American eagle with outspread wings,sculptured in stone by Valperti. Over the main entrance is a marblestatue of History recording the events of the Nation, while rolling overthe globe in a winged car, the wheel of which serves as a clock. This
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o --i b H a> o H <o wK 94 PICTURESQUE WASHINGTON. was executed by Carlo Franzoni, and is known as Franzonis His-torical clock. When the House of Representatives removed to its new hall it wassuggested by Senator Morrill, of Vermont, then a member of theHouse, that the old hall should be taken for a National Gallery ofStatuary, and that each state should be permitted to send the effi-gies of two of her chosen sons, in marble or in bronze, to be placedpermanently here. The suggestion was adopted, and the states wereinvited to send contributions of statues. The first to respond to the invitation was the State of Rhode Island,which contributed a statue of Roger Williams, her great Apostle ofReligious Freedom, and a statue of Gen. Nathanael Greene, a dis-tinguished soldier of the Revolutionary War. Connecticut followedwith statues of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, the last colonial governorof the State, to whom Washington familiarly applied the sobriquetof Brother Jonathan ; and Roger Sherm

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