Existing comment:
Design and Construction
The Cannon House Office Building (begun in 1905 and opened in 1908) is the oldest office building constructed for either house of Congress and is an important example of the Beaux Arts style of architecture. This building and a similar one for the Senate (now the Russell Senate Office Building) relieved overcrowding in the U.S. Capitol. Before they opened, members had to find office space in rented quarters or borrow it in Capitol committee rooms.
The Cannon House Office Building was designed by the prominent New York architectural firm Carrere and Hastings. John M. Carrere and Thomas Hastings, who had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and had worked for McKim, Mead, and White, designed many notable buildings, including the New York Public Library. They were also the architects of the Russell Senate Office Building.
The building was designed as a hollow trapezoid to admit light to inner offices. It included such state-of-the-art features as a forced-air ventilation system, steam heat, individual lavatories with hot and cold running water and ice water, telephones and electricity. When the building opened in contained 397 offices, one for each representative in the 61st Congress, and 14 committee rooms. Later additions and changes, and the relocation of members to two additional buildings, resulted in the present 142 three-room suites, the Caucus Room and three hearing rooms.
In 1962, the building was named for Joseph Gurney Cannon, an Illinois Republican who served almost five decades in Congress and was Speaker of the House when the building was authorized and when it was completed.
The Rotunda:
The Cannon Rotunda functions as a lobby and an introduction to the grandeur of the building. Eighteen Corinthian columns on a marble arcade support a richly detailed entablature, and the coffered dome's oculus is glazed to flood the Rotunda with natural light. At the rear, a split staircase leads to the upper floors. |