By Virginia Hall, LM 26-02
The Bronze statue surmounting the Dome of the United States Capitol, and facing to the East, is officially known as the Statue of Freedom. It is 19 feet 6 inches high and weighs 14,985 pounds. The cost, exclusive of erecting, was $23,796.82.
Shortly after he was appointed Architect of the Capitol Extensions, Thomas U Walter began studies for a new dome. Although no one had asked him to undertake these studies, it was obvious that a new dome of greater size and grandeur was needed to complement the vastly enlarged Capitol. The old dome, built by Charles Bulfinch in the mid-1820's, had become an embarrassing relic by the 1850's. Built of wood, covered with copper, it was also a fire hazard in need of repair.
Mr Walter hung on his office wall a drawing of the Capitol as it would appear once the extensions were finished but without the familiar Bulfinch dome. Instead, the drawing showed a new cast-iron dome with columns, brackets, eighty windows and a crowning statue. The drawing caused an immediate sensation among congressmen and senators who visited the architect's office. Within ten weeks, without committee hearings and after very little debate, the House of Representatives appropriated $100,000 to begin construction of a new dome. The Senate agreed a few days later and President Franklin Pierce signed the legislation on March 3, 1855. Although some members thought the $100,000 would cover the entire cost of the work, Walter knew it would only get the job started, and the place to start was at the drafting board where details would be worked out over the next few months.
Bulfinch's wooden dome was removed in the fall of 1856. A temporary roof was installed over the rotunda to protect it during the construction project. A wooden scaffold standing on the rotunda floor passed through the temporary roof and held a boom and derrick that would lift the ironwork into place by steam-powered engines. The steam engines were fueled by wood salvaged from the old dome.
Work on the dome progressed at a rapid pace in 1857. Nearly all
the columns were set on brackets embedded in a new masonry foundation built
on top of the old rotunda walls. In 1858 work slowed to a crawl due
to the state of war between Walter, the architect and Montgomery C Meigs,
the supervising engineer. Walter refused to hand over drawings because
they
were often changed without consultation. Meigs retaliated by
refusing to approve the pay of the draftsmen in Walter's office.
While progress on the dome suffered, the stand-off allowed time for Walter to revise the design of the upper parts of the dome. The revisions had become necessary because the size of the statue that was commissioned for the top of the dome was significantly larger than originally anticipated.
Walter's original design called for a statue 16 feet, 9 inches tall. When the model of the statue was finished in the studio of Thomas Crawford, an American Sculptor working in Rome, it stood 19 feet, 6 inches tall. Walter was obliged to lower the overall height of the dome in order to broaden the platform which would carry the statue. The revisions lowered the height of the dome from 300 to 287 feet.
In the fall of 1859, Meigs was replaced by William B Franklin as Engineer in Charge. A few weeks after taking his post, Franklin received a voluntary proposal from the Brooklyn foundry of Janes, Fowler, Kirtland and Company. The firm proposed to finish all remaining work on the dome for seven cents per pound "complete and put up". The offer was accepted in February, 1860, placing the work under a single contract. Because of this arrangement, construction of the dome was uninterrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. While work stopped on the Capitol extensions for one year, the dome continued to rise above the rotunda.
On December 2, 1863, the last section Of the STATUE OF FREEDOM was put into place on top of the dome. Walter resigned on May 26, 1865 and was succeeded by Edward Clark who completed the last details of the dome. The interior was finished in January, 1866. Walter died in 1887 without being paid for his greatest architectural creation, the Dome of the United States Capitol.
The bronze Statue of Freedom by Thomas Crawford, as we know it, is a classical female figure of Freedom wearing flowing draperies. A brooch inscribed "US" clasps her fringed robes. Her right hand rests upon the hilt of a sheathed sword; her left holds a laurel victory wreath and the shield of the United States. After Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, objected to the sculptor's Intention to include a liberty cap (the symbol of freed slaves), Crawford replaced it with a crested helmet surmounted by an eagle headdress.
Crawford was commissioned to design the Statue of Freedom in 1855 and executed the model for the statue in his studio in Rome. After completing the model, the sculptor died suddenly in February, 1857. His widow sent the model, packed in six crates, from Italy. Problems in transporting the model delayed its arrival in Washington until March, 1859. On April 19, 1858, the model left Rome on the bark EMILY TAYLOR in huge crates. The bark (a small sailing vessel) sprung a leak and put in to Gibraltar for repairs. The voyage resumed but stormy weather caused new leaks to develop. In an attempt to lighten the load and save the valuable model, much of the cargo of bales of rags and cases of citron were thrown overboard. On the 27th of July, the leak increased to such an extent that safety demanded the bark put in to Bermuda. Here the vessel was condemned and sold. The model was stored. Finally in December of 1858, Tappan and Starbuck of New York, acting as general agents for the United States in the receipt and forwarding of the statuary, notified Captain M C Meigs, in charge of construction at the Capitol, that the bark G W NORTON, from Bermuda, had arrived with some of the statuary. As late as March 30, 1858, the last sections of the model were shipped from New York to Washington by the schooner STATESMAN.
The contract for casting the statue in bronze was awarded to Clark Mills, whose foundry was located on Bladensburg Road, which was then on the outskirts of Washington. The government agreed to rent Mill's foundry and to purchase all necessary materials, which included 15,000 pounds of copper, 1500 pounds of tin and 200 pounds of zinc. Lead was also added to the molten metal.
The annual report of Thomas U Walter, Architect of the Capitol Extension, dated November 1, 1862, states that "the Statue of Freedom" which is intended as the crowning feature of the dome, is completed, and removed to the grounds east of the Capitol, where it has been placed on a temporary pedestal, in order that the public may have an opportunity to examine it before it is raised to its destined position.
The statue was cast in five sections. Four of these were raised by a steam hoist and a hand-cranked winch. The placement of the fifth section, the head and shoulders, was cause for a special ceremony. Special order No 248 of the War Department provided that at the moment the last section was placed and a flag was displayed from the statue, a national salute of thirty-five guns should be fired from a field battery on Capitol Hill. The last gun from this salute was to be answered by a similar salute from the twelve forts, which at that time constituted a line of fortifications surrounding the city of Washington.
Precisely at 12PM on the second day of December, 1863, the crowning feature of the statue was started from the ground in front of the Capitol by a steam apparatus. In twenty minutes it reached the height of three hundred feet where it was moved into place and secured. The flag was unfurled over the head of the statue and the national salute was fired.
After casting in bronze was completed, the plaster model was returned to the Capitol and displayed in the National Statuary Hall. A few years later it was stored in sections in the basement of the Capitol. In 1890, the architect of the Capitol, Edward Clark, proposed that the damaged model be reassembled and moved to the National Museum. The model was sawed apart and displayed at the Smithsonian Institution until 1967 when it was transferred to a storage facility in Suitland, Maryland. Returning the model to Capitol Hill was explored several times, but no action was taken until 1992 when the US Capitol Preservation Commission provided especially donated funds to move, reassemble and restore the model. It is now on permanent display in the basement rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building.
In 1988 the need to restore the statue and its pedestal became evident
after 126 years exposed to the elements. On May 9, 1993, Freedom
was lifted from its pedestal by a specially equipped Helicopter and
lowered onto a platform
on the Capitol's east front plaza.
The conservation of the statue included removing
corrosion and caulk by medium pressure water blasting and stripping the
interior paint; repairs to the bronze included
approximately 750 bronze plugs and patches. Conservators used chemicals
to create a "bronze green" patina and applied
protective lacquer and wax coatings, which will be reapplied
as necessary. The cast iron pedestal was
cleaned, repaired and painted in place.
The return of the Statue of Freedom to her perch atop the dome was engineered
by Erickson Air-Crane Co in cooperation with the Office of the Architect
of the Capitol and took about fifteen minutes, including the airlift, alignment
and lowering of the statue onto its pedestal. Master of ceremonies
and historian David McCullough observed, after the statue was securely
in place, "Never has she looked better."
From Calcoin News, Vol 53, No. 3, Summer 1999