The author Brian Jay Jones, a one-time Hill staffer, has written lengthy biographies of Dr. Seuss, George Lucas, and Jim Henson. Now he’s turned his attention to a very different American icon: the US Capitol. In his latest book, The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building, J ones offers up plenty of details that you most likely won’t encounter on a tour. We called him to hear more about some of the bits that we found most intriguing. The Design Wasn’t the First President’s First Choice The Capitol’s original designer, physician and amateur architect William Thornton, was selected via a national competition. But George Washington had preferred a different candidate, an actual architect named Stephen Hallet. Washington then hired his pick to turn the winner’s drawings into reality—creating a dynamic that was basically guaranteed to cause conflict. “Here’s George Washington, the smartest, most famous man in America, and what does he do?” says Jones. “The guy who comes in second, he’s like, ‘You know what? You can implement the plan of the winner.’ Did he know that was just doomed to fail?” Tasked with converting Thornton’s drawings into architectural plans, Hallet insisted on following his own designs. He was fired after about a year. Things Have Always Been Very Heated In the pre-air-conditioning era, lawmakers’ chambers were in the windowless interior of the Capitol, where airflow was almost nonexistent. Things got hot. “Can you imagine sitting in that building in a wool suit and a wig?” says Jones. “That was one of the arguments they were constantly having: ‘Can we please put the chambers where there are windows that we can open?’ ” It Was a Combustible Environment Fires were a constant threat to the Capitol, and not just that one time when the British put a torch to it. In the days before electric lights, candles were often to blame for starting a blaze. A big concern was all of the books stored in the Library of Congress (at the time, housed in the Capitol building), which caught fire twice. As a preventive measure, the library was encased in cast iron. “One of the major things that changed because of fires was the determination to use fireproof materials to the extent possible,” says Jones. “It’s one of the reasons the dome is made of cast iron.” In addition, tiny doors concealing water spigots were installed at ground level along the corridors in case of fire. It Was Almost George Washington’s Final Home Thornton thought it would make sense for Washington to reside in the Capitol—after his death. “Thornton believed Washington’s remains should be preserved at the literal heart of the American government,” says Jones, “and it didn’t matter that Washington himself had already specified he be buried at his beloved Mount Vernon.” A presidential tomb was actually constructed under the rotunda, but neither Washington nor anyone else has ever occupied it. Congress revisited the topic as the centennial of Washington’s birth approached in 1832, but the request to dig him up and rebury him under the Capitol was firmly shut down by an heir of the first President. This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Washingtonian.The post The US Capitol Gets Its Own “Biography” first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less