Perspectives on the Art and Architectural History of the United States Capitol
About Perspectives on the Art and Architectural History of the United States Capitol
Since 1994 the U.S. Capitol Historical Society has conducted a series of conferences each fall on the art and architectural history of the United States Capitol planned with the cooperation of the Curator of the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, Dr. Barbara Wolanin. The Press is publishing the volumes resulting from this series.
“(Paris on the Potomac) is another consistently engaging and insightful collection of essays published as part of the Perspectives on the Art and Architectural History of the United States Capitol series…. As a whole, the collection underlies the importance of the French-American amity and offers Washington, D.C.—as much a European city as an American one—as irrefutable evidence that space and place are occupied by politics and ideology as much as they are by people.”
— The Journal of Southern History
Series Editor(s)
Donald Kennon, Senior Editor
US Capitol Historical Society
Featured Title
Paris on the Potomac
The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C.
Edited by Cynthia R. Field, Isabelle Gournay and Thomas P. SommaIn 1910 John Merven Carrère, a Paris-trained American architect, wrote, “Learning from Paris made Washington outstanding among American cities.” The five essays in Paris on the Potomac explore aspects of this influence on the artistic and architectural environment of Washington, D.…
All Titles
Incidental Architect
William Thornton and the Cultural Life of Early Washington, D.C., 1794–1828
By Gordon S. BrownWhile the majority of scholarship on early Washington focuses on its political and physical development, in Incidental Architect Gordon S. Brown describes the intellectual and social scene of the 1790s and early 1800s through the lives of a prominent couple whose cultural aspirations served as both model and mirror for the city’s own.…
Paris on the Potomac
The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C.
Edited by Cynthia R. Field, Isabelle Gournay and Thomas P. SommaIn 1910 John Merven Carrère, a Paris-trained American architect, wrote, “Learning from Paris made Washington outstanding among American cities.” The five essays in Paris on the Potomac explore aspects of this influence on the artistic and architectural environment of Washington, D.…
American Pantheon
Sculptural and Artistic Decoration of the United States Capitol
Edited by Donald R. Kennon and Thomas P. SommaLike the ancient Roman Pantheon, the U.S. Capitol was designed by its political and aesthetic arbiters to memorialize the virtues, events, and persons most representative of the nation's ideals—an attempt to raise a particular version of the nation's founding to the level of myth.…
Montgomery C. Meigs and the Building of the Nation’s Capital
Edited by William C. Dickinson, Donald R. Kennon and Dean A. HerrinAt the age of thirty-six, in 1852, Lt. Montgomery Cunningham Meigs of the Army Corps of Engineers reported to Washington, D.C., for duty as a special assistant to the chief army engineer, Gen. Joseph G.…
Art and Empire
The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815–1860
By Vivien Green FrydThe subject matter and iconography of much of the art in the U.S. Capitol forms a remarkably coherent program of the early course of North American empire, from discovery and settlement to the national development and westward expansion that necessitated the subjugation of the indigenous peoples.…
The United States Capitol
Designing and Decorating a National Icon
Edited by Donald R. KennonThe United States Capitol is a national cultural icon, and among the most visually recognized seats of government in the world. The past quarter century has witnessed an explosion of scholarly interest in the art and architectural history of the Capitol.…
