Schumer: No one thought this little experiment would endure.
And now we’ve been the greatest nation in the world for so many years.
And the symbol of that is the Capitol.
It’s timeless.
Ryan: Every morning I go to the office, my office is just off the side of the Rotunda,
I always look up. It’s an amazing thing to see.
I’m just always in awe. And I just kind of pinch myself
that this is a place I get to come to and work every day.
Pelosi: When you see that Dome of the Capitol it evokes
a patriotic and emotional response.
Capito: It’s America and it’s strong. It’s alive.
When I walk in the heart beat goes up.
Cohen: It’s something that every American citizen can benefit from.
Blunt: The Dome of the Capitol is a symbol of freedom
like no other in the world.
Merdon: What it represents is the people’s dreams of this country
and everything that everybody has ever fought for.
Ayers: It represents who we are as American people.
It represents our oneness and our unity as a nation.
McConnell: If you want to see a picture of the American democracy
take a look at the Capitol.
Allen: Charles Bulfinch built the first Capitol Dome.
Thomas U. Walter was the Architect of the Capitol in 1850.
He tripled the size of the building.
Blunt: And suddenly the Dome wasn’t nearly big enough.
Allen: So Walter did a drawing of this incredible new Dome
sitting on top of the old building.
Ayers: He actually hung up that drawing in his office.
Allen: And Congressmen and Senators would look at this magnificent drawing.
Ayers: They quickly said, “We’ve got to do that.”
And low and behold they did.
Merdon: They did look at the weight of the Dome on the existing stone foundation.
They also wanted some fire resistance. And they wanted it to last a long time.
Allen: It was pretty obvious that that meant cast iron.
Allen: Civil war breaks out in 1861.
The contractor Janes, Fowler, Kirtland and Company continues building the Dome.
They only had about 10 people working.
They couldn’t do much every day. But they worked every single day.
Long: You just have such an appreciation for the people who actually built it to begin with.
Abriatis: The craftsmanship that goes into these ornaments that are made by hand.
Angba: For example, one column capital can comprise of over 200 pieces.
Long: They’re put together like a little puzzle.
Where you put each piece together and then you put one final pin in that held it all together.
Merdon: And they’re all very well detailed.
You know, they have the veins in the leaves showing.
Long: They didn’t have the same modern tools that we have. They certainly didn’t have the
conditions that we have; they were in the middle of war.
But they managed to do this and it’s absolutely amazing.
Long: The Dome is over 150 years old.
It’s cast iron. It’s going to deteriorate over time as with any building material.
Angba: Over the years, rain, snow, ice, took its toll.
Merdon: There were several studies done. Accessing the Dome, documenting the cracks;
over thirteen hundred cracks.
Ayers: Cracks that were several feet long, in cast iron plates about
three eighths of an inch thick. We had a serious problem.
Merdon: Not only of the face of the Dome
but also the components that keep the Dome together.
Cohen: The entire structure was really threatened. It represented a safety concern.
Ayers: Literally hundreds of pieces that have broken off and fallen
to the roof of the Capitol building.
Long: The last major restoration was back in 1959, 1960.
They didn’t go into as much detail as what we did.
Ayers: The repairs that were done were virtually all welded.
And many of those welds have re-cracked.
We learned that the rain gutters were completely clogged with rust
that was pouring off the Dome from all of the pieces that have been rusting.
Ultimately the water got inside the Dome.
Sprouse: I mean look at what we could loose here you know; a lot for a lot of people.
Carnevale: It’s an enormous task. It is going to be a long time before
we are able to do this again.
So it’s very very important that when we do it, we do it right.
Merdon: Before you even start on the job there’s a significant amount of planning.
First documenting the condition, estimates, schedules, plans.
Gallagher: We have this very fragile artwork and sensitive artwork
sitting in the middle of our projects.
Johnson: Pictures, paintings, you’ve got everything in here. It’s priceless.
Ayers: So the first thing we did was install the safety netting in the Rotunda of the Dome.
Gallagher: The netting is what separates, allows us work on this side safely and have the
public on that side. So if a piece of cast iron were dropped, a tool, dust, any of that
can’t make it’s way through.
Long: A huge part of this job was the scaffolding. If you look at the unique way the scaffold was
put together, both on the interior of the Rotunda as well as the exterior,
and that makes or breaks you for the entire project.
Abriatis: So we ended up with 25 levels of scaffolding.
And if you laid them end to end, about 55 miles of scaffolding.
Hale: The lock-and-stitch saved this building. And it’s stronger than the cast iron.
Ayers: The lock-and-stitch method is a mechanical fastening of two pieces of cast iron.
Hale: You use the lock-and-stitch to seal a crack. So you fill it in with the steel instead of cast iron.
Ayers: A series of pins are installed and the stitches are installed perpendicular
and the head of the pin shears off at the right torque.
Hale: And grind it down, lock it, and it’s done.
Abriatis: The balustrade around the tholos level of the Dome was in such poor condition that the
entire thing had to be shipped to the foundry.
They were actually able to recycle and salvage a lot of the historical parts that were beyond repair.
They melted the original parts down and re-introduced it into the balustrade
that came back from the foundry.
The cupola windows, the majority of them go back to the original construction of 1855.
So we replaced five that were damaged beyond repair.
So we replicated the same means and methods that they used to create the original windows.
It’s called slump-pour glass.
So they basically take a giant colander of 2,000 degree molten glass,
they pour it between two rollers and it rolls the entire window out
and it gets that wavy shower glass pattern to it.
Some of the worst damage to the Dome is this internal gutter system that has failed.
A number of new parts were made in the foundry. It was reassembled in their warehouse to make sure
everything completely fit perfect, and shipped back to the Capitol Dome,
hoisted all the way up through 21 levels of scaffolding and reassembled atop of it.
Angba: You know all over the Dome you have ornaments that we had to take out.
Abriatis: That weigh up to 600, 700 pounds;
36 giant acorn finials that sit above the windows, 36 giant acorn pendants that hang below the windows,
36 giant antefixes that sit on the rib-lines, then there’s 72 scrolls that go between them.
Angba: So all of that has to be disassembled, blasted, repaired, repainted, reassembled, and reattached.
Ayers: There were certainly some that were damaged and rusted beyond repair.
Merdon: And we would have to recreate those pieces.
Abriatis: We take one off that’s in good shape, ship it off to the foundry,
and they will 3D scan every single one of these parts in, and press it in a sand mold,
and then pour molten cast iron in it to create the new part.
Some of the larger items like the gutters, those are up to 15 feet long.
They can weigh up to 400 pounds.
So those they’ll make out of wood; plywood. They’ll make a handmade pattern on that article.
So the color on the exterior of the Dome is “Dome White” color paint especially made for the
Capitol Dome, meant to replicate the sandstone painting of the West Front of the Capitol from the original construction.
Gallagher: From what we discovered the Rotunda has always suffered from leaks from the roof.
We had places where water had come through and damaged plaster below, damaged cast iron here,
rusted things, damaged coatings.
Wright: The paint bubbles. It pops away from the underlying layers. It’s a disaster.
Gallagher: Basically the amount of deteriorations on the exterior had been mirrored on the interior.
And so this was the time to fix the interior as well.
Starting from the top we’re doing a lot of cast iron repairs and painting. We worked our way down to the Frieze.
We’re repairing areas that have been damaged.
Oehrlein: As part of this work all of the lead paint is being removed; down to the bare cast iron.
Long: The interior had never been stripped down before so all of the original coats of paint were on there
and that in it of itself was a treasure being able to go back and look at the many layers of history.
Oehrlein: Hundreds and hundreds of samples were removed from the cast iron.
Gallagher: We were able to develop timelines on what the different color schemes were.
Oehrlein: What we found was the interior Rotunda has been painted 4 times. What we’re doing now is the fifth.
When we were talking about how do we paint the interior of the Rotunda, you know, the first thought was
well let’s look at the historic color schemes and choose one of those.
Wright: And we painted 2 coffers; a palette from 1906 and a palette from 1866.
The 1906 palette was much more pleasing so we started with that and then we revised the value to give it more contrast.
Ayers: Pierre L’Enfant said to George Washington, place this Capitol building
upon a pedestal awaiting a monument. And it’s still a monument today.
McConnel: This restoration will be part of the history of this magnificent building.
Ryan: This goes so far beyond craftsmanship. This is symbolic.
Long: It is truly a symbol of what it has taken to get to the point that we are at today.
You know, the Statue of Freedom isn’t just icing on the cake. It means something.
Capito: What we’re trying to preserve here is the solidness of our country.
Ryan: It’s just an amazing responsibility that we have on our shoulders to preserve the principles
of our founding, to preserve the American idea, and therefore preserve the building and the Rotunda.
Allen: To hand them down to the next generation. I mean it’s our responsibility.
We’re just stewards of these irreplaceable treasures. We’ve got to take care of them.
Johnson: This represents the United States.
Everybody, the entire world, is looking at this building.
Ayers: It brings about a sense of patriotism, a sense of strength, a sense of unity.
Holland: What other symbol can you think of that stands more for freedom?
This stands for freedom.