United States Capitol

The United States Capitol, seat of the United States Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., traces its design to the physician and amateur architect William Thornton, whose plan was approved in 1793 and whose cornerstone was laid that September 18, with the building first occupied in 1800. British troops set fire to it during the War of 1812, and it was restored within five years, after which the architects Benjamin Henry Latrobe and later Thomas Ustick Walter, working with August Schoenborn, extended and remodeled the building through the 1850s and beyond, with the final wing completed as late as 1962. Its cast iron dome, designed by Walter and completed around 1866, rises about three times the height of the original copper dome it replaced, weighs nearly 8.9 million pounds, and is topped by the bronze Statue of Freedom, raised into place in 1863; inside it, Constantino Brumidi's fresco The Apotheosis of Washington covers the underside of the canopy. Built in the American neoclassical style, the Capitol stands 288 feet tall, the fourth tallest structure in Washington, and a modern underground visitor center was added beneath its east front in 2008.