September 19, 1814 – Senate Moves into Emergency Quarters Following the Invasion of the British

On August 24, 1814, invading British troops during the War of 1812 marched into Washington, D.C. and set fire to the U.S. Capitol building, inter alia. (Fortunately Congress was in recess.) The fire was particularly destructive to the Capitol’s Senate wing. President James Madison arranged for Congress to meet temporarily at Blodgett’s Hotel on E Street, Northwest, between 7th and 8th Streets.

Blodgett’s Hotel, via Library of Congress

The Klimpton Monaco now occupies the site. Their website explains:

In 1810 the US government purchased the hotel [built in 1793] to house the Post Office Department and the City Post Office on the first floor, and the Patent Office on the upper floors. In 1814, by pure luck, it was the only government building in Washington to survive when Sir George Cockburn ordered British troops to burn all public property in the capital. On September 19 of that year, the 13th session of Congress was convened here, and the building became the Hall of Congress for a short period thereafter.

Ultimately Blodgett’s did burn to the ground in an accidental fire in 1836. . . . .”

Meanwhile, the following year, in December, 1815 the Senate moved to the so-called “Brick Capitol,” a large red-brick structure on the site of today’s Supreme Court, built to accommodate Congress temporarily. The Senate remained there until March 1819, when the reconstruction of the Senate Chamber was finally completed.

Original Brick Capitol building, circa 1815, (c) DC Historic Designs, LLC, 2013. Dynamic Views theme.

A U.S. Senate history site recounted:

By 1850, with the admission of five new states within five years, the chamber barely had room for the sixty-two members then serving. The space situation turned critical and a solution was desperately needed.

In September 1850, Congress appropriated $100,000 to plan a major addition, with Senate and House wings placed near the building’s northern and southern walls attached by narrow corridors. Construction began in June 1851.

This massive project doubled the Capitol’s original space. Lasting seventeen years and employing seven hundred men, this would become one of the largest and most expensive construction projects in nineteenth-century America. No other building could compare in cost, scale, complexity, and richness. On January 4, 1859, sixty-four senators lined up, two by two, in the cramped old chamber and moved in solemn procession to the spacious new chamber. They knew that the fate of the Union would be decided in that place.”