Existing comment:
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Room:
This room is part of the 1850s Senate extension to the Capitol. It was first occupied in 1859 by the Committee on Patents. In keeping with that theme, artist Constantino Brumidi decorated the corridor in which you are standing with portraits of prominent inventors. Above the committee room's door is a lunette depicting Robert Fulton, the inventor of the first commercially successful steamboat. In the surrounding area are portraits of John Fitch, inventor of an earlier steamboat, and Benjamin Franklin.
Other occupants of this room have included the Committee on Female Suffrage and the Committee on Territories. Since 1933, the Committee on Foreign Relations has met here to discuss legislation and receive foreign dignitaries. Established in 1816, this committee has played an influential role in setting United States foreign policy, most notably in the purchase of Alaska in 1867, the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, and the establishment of the United Nations following World War II. |