Once, we built for beauty.(The United States Capitol: Its Architecture and Decoration )(Book Review)

The United States Capitol: Its Architecture and Decoration By Henry Hope Reed Principal Photography by Anne Day W. W. Norton & Company, 288 pages, $50

I should acknowledge at the outset that I owe my vocation to Henry Hope Reed. Not just because Reed, starting in the 1950s, laid the groundwork for the current resurgence of traditional civic art and architecture with books such as The Golden City. I am one of many fortunate souls who has benefited from his encouragement and support over the years.

Reed's new, lavishly illustrated book on the U.S. Capitol is his culminating work, simply because no other American building better epitomizes the ideals he has advocated throughout his career--architectural design in the great tradition, generous decoration by means of sculpture and mural painting, and, last but not least, enlightened patronage.

The classical image of Washington that resonates so deeply in the public consciousness is largely attributable to the city's namesake. George Washington was the patron who not only chose the French engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant as the planner of the Federal City, but also selected the design for the original Capitol produced by the remarkable amateur architect William Thornton.

The development of the Capitol, which Reed traces in the first part of his book, extended over a century. It got underway with Thornton's design of 1793, and was punctuated by the completion of the original building in 1829. This was a handsome edifice with a low dome of copper and wood. The expansion, which involved new Senate and House wings and the stupendous cast-iron dome we encounter today, started with Thomas Ustick Waiter's appointment as architect of the Capitol in 1851 and continued until the graceful three-level terrace on the West front, designed by the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, was completed 40 years later. (Reed only briefly discusses, in his preface, the awful scheme for a three-level, 580,000-square-foot subterranean expansion on the Capitol's east side, the Capitol Visitor Center, scheduled for completion in the fall of 2006.)

Foremost among the artists who deocorated the Captiol was the painter Constantino Brumidi, born and trained in Rome. He took his cues from Raphael above all, especially the Renaissance master's celebrated Vatican murals. Hired by the brilliant Army engineer who supervised ...