Office Furniture-1819 style

A week or so ago, a friend and I were talking about the census and what might happen if a few districts were added to the House of Representatives. It was a good conversation, and we hashed over all sorts of wonky political issues, and then it occurred to me, but what about the desks?

I mean the actual physical seats on the House floor. Where do they come from, it’s not like you can go to OfficeMax and pick up a couple new ones.

As I’m not a scholar of the US Capitol art and architecture I went surfing.

Very quickly, I was able to find a lovely link all about the Senate Chamber desks, and my favorite tab is the history and mystery. On the other hand it took some digging to get anything close to that on the House side (is there a metaphor here? Perhaps)

The short answer on the Senate side seems to be that, if we were to add a new Senators ( Puerto Rico, District of Columbia maybe even Guam) the desk would be built in the Senate Cabinet Shop. Again on the House side, I searched through various documents and more Googling and it wasn’t that obvious. So I sent a email to them…I’ll let you know what I get back.

In my searching, I found the following tidbits interesting, perhaps you will too. Or maybe your are just screaming “omigod what a giant geek she is”… whatever

After the Capitol was burned in 1814 during the War of 1812, the building was gutted and all new furnishings were required. Four years later, funds were secured for the furnishing of the rebuilt Hall.

Under the direction of Speaker Henry Clay, an advertisement was placed in the leading newspapers of Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York in search of a cabinetmaker who could supply “…chairs and tables…made out of the best St. Domingo mahogany, well seasoned, strong, neat and plain; without any superfluous ornament…” Mercifully it appears Speaker Clay had good taste. I shudder to think of what some recent inhabitants might have picked.

A New York cabinetmaker named Thomas Constantine was chosen for the contract. The desks are referred to as the “Constantine desks”. Except they shield this knowledge from you till you’ve learn all about “Splendid Hall” first. Seriously it’s ten clicks through the hall till you get to “artifacts”. Oy.

The desks have a bowed hexagonal shape to allow for the curved seating rows in the old Hall. All the Member desks had unusual shapes, and some had two or three drawers. Thomas Hart Benton’s desk was sold in the 1858 auction for $6.25. Hey someone do the math conversion on this and see if even in 1858 that still sounds cheap! ( UPDATE: see below)

Unlike the Gold Dome, the desks on the US House floor have not been fitted for each member to vote from their seat, the Member is provided with a personalized Vote-ID Card which can be used to vote electronically. A number of vote stations are positioned around the Chamber. Each vote station has a slot into which the voting card is inserted and buttons marked “yea,” “nay,” “present.”

The desks have been modified to include microphones and small speaker boxes-boy these things don’t look too high tech, and oh and excuse me they are called the Speech Reinforcement System, you have to love government lingo.

What was a little odd in the surfing, is that someone at the clerks office-clearly in the art and history department thinks we all want to know a whole lot more about the “mace” than I think we really do.

Oh and the chairs, this is a whole new ball game that wasn’t necessarily intuitive either. Did you know that the Member can buy their chairs when they leave? Then a new one is made, but again-not a lot of detail on who does that. Never fear I asked for that as well.

After a couple hours of reading it occurred to me that, like your home the Capitol and it’s furnishings get worn out or moved around, and have to be replaced. I knew this about the White House, but I suppose it didn’t occur to me the same would be true of the Capitol furnishings.

Lots more on the sites linked, I found it interesting hope you will too.

This just in from my friend Martin Matheny:

You piqued my curiosity, so I took a spin through the series of tubes and found some information.

Now, Lord knows, I’m no economist, but I don’t think that relative share of GDP is the best indicator, plus it seems to be an outlier anyway. I guess my bet would be on CPI, especially since we’re talking about a good someone bought. So Thomas Hart Benton’s desk? Worth about $185 bucks. They musta had a coupon.

Thanks Martin!