03.17.24: Statuary Hall

When I’m photographing indoor tourist sites I spend a lot of time looking up.

It’s become automatic, like an involuntary reflex.

I think it’s because so many indoor locations are crowded with so many people that it becomes impossible to get interesting photos at eye level. “Hey, that’s a nice sculpture … behind those 27 people with iPhones above their heads.”

I’ve also learned that ceilings above many of these sites are incredible and it’s pretty much impossible for people to stand between me and a ceiling, so I’ll try to get some eye-level photos before pointing the camera straight up.

That’s what happened here.

My wife and I were visiting Washington, D.C., a number of years ago, just a few years after I retired. During my working days I spent a significant amount of time in D.C., including attending a number of meetings and other functions in the U.S. Capitol Building. But neither my wife or I had toured the building since we were kids.

So I called one of my D.C. contacts and set up a private tour.

We were taken through a number of rooms that aren’t part of the public tours and I grabbed a few photos, but most I would consider to be “I was there” photos and not images that had the interesting elements I seek in photos I post to my website. I had hoped to get a shot looking up at the inside of the rotunda (a no-brainer for the types of photos I try to get), but a construction project had everything draped with netting. So that was out.

As we were wrapping up the tour our guide, a top staffer from the office of a high-ranking senator, walked us through National Statuary Hall, just south of the rotunda, before taking us back to the senator’s office suite. I thought I could possible get some interesting shots of the statues and architecture in that hall, but wasn’t necessarily surprised when it looked like the entire population of New Hampshire had filled the room.

Then I looked up.

Above the National Statuary Hall is an ornate curved ceiling with a lantern (the elevated center structure with glazed glass that admits light) and a huge, elaborate chandelier hanging down. And there was no construction blocking the view.

So I leaned back, pointed the camera up and composed what I thought would be an interesting photo: the whiter, lighter lantern centered at the top of the image, the chandelier hanging down the middle toward the bottom of the image with the ornate blend of gold shapes providing a curving background.

I liked what I saw so I grabbed the shot.

When I looked down the senator’s staffer was looking at me with an odd expression. “I liked the ceiling,” I told him, then showed him the image on the camera’s digital screen.

He looked at it and responded, “huh … .”

Not the reaction I typically seek, but I’ll take it.

National Statuary Hall, also referred to as the Old Hall of the House, is home to 38 statues representing a number of the nation’s states. It was originally the meeting chamber for the U.S. House of Representatives, but the acoustics of the curved ceiling created annoying echoes, making it extremely difficult to conduct business in the room. So a new hall was built and the House of Representatives moved to its current location in 1857. The Old Hall of the House sat empty for about a decade before a decision was made to use it as a statuary hall.