Fig. 2.1 Detail of US Capitol building, east facade, May 1858. Salted paper print, 14 × 9.8 inches (37.2 × 24.8 cm).
A beautifully centered view of the east front, this perspective relays the massive scale of the Capitol dome while also highlighting Meigs’s central steam powered crane which made the work possible.
The historic age, the grand epochs of art have left us cathedrals, palaces, and monuments, . . . the beautiful in its most perfect form, architecture. But a short time ago, to study these celebrated monuments, it was necessary to go to the very place itself. . . . Now photography gives them to you entire, in its admirable reproductions. The most minute detail does not escape it.
—Photographic and Fine Art Journal, June 1855 84
John Wood’s architectural photographs, taken during his tenure as the first federal government photographer, encompass more than 140 views of the US Capitol building and nearly fifty plates of related extension projects at the US General Post Office and Patent Office. Collectively they form the most important documentary archives of the capital city before the Civil War. As indicated by the overwhelming number of images taken on his larger and more labor intensive 13 × 18 inch (33 × 45.7 cm) plates, he was keenly aware of the importance of these images relative to his concurrent documentation of the Washington Aqueduct. These images demanded more: he had to record the progress of each building’s construction while also being mindful of its symbolic significance.
Each building housed an agency that embodied aspects of the ideals Emerson ascribed to the young democracy. The Capitol was not only the center of a democratic government, but more specifically a place where each state was ideally represented by its best and brightest. The Patent Office represented
As these frames progress, a shadow moves across the stage platform. The crowd gathers closer and the stage fills in. The series culminates with Lincoln delivering his inaugural address under the pergola. Figures 4.3a and 4.3b were printed in their original stereoscopic format, while 4.3c and 4.3d were printed from enlarged negatives made from stereoscopic plates. They are all shown here at the same scale for comparison.
Plate 1 Inauguration of James Buchanan, president of the United States, at the east front of the US Capitol, March 4, 1857. Salted paper print from a wet-collodion negative, 10.4 × 9 inches (26.4 × 22.8 cm).
Widely acknowledged as the first photographic documentation of a US presidential inauguration, this is one of two views that Wood took that day.
Just behind the trees at the left is the the platform Wood stood on to take the view shown in Plate 3. The newspapers described what was surely Wood’s camera, noting one of “mammoth proportions.” This image was likely taken during Lincoln’s oath of o ce.
Plate 35
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According to Meigs’s journals, Wood’s photographic images of the White House—among the earliest known—were taken at the request of Gov. William H. Seward (NY), who wished to gift them to Lady Anne Napier, wife of the British minister to the United States.
This view of the White House shows a glimpse of the greenhouse o the west terrace. Constructed in 1857 at the request of President James Buchanan’s niece, Harriet Lane, his o cial White House hostess, it was destroyed in a fire in 1867.
Plate 64 Washington, DC, from the roof of the Capitol, looking northwest, Pennsylvania Avenue at left, June 27, 1861. Salted paper print, 17.6 × 11.5 inches (44.8 29.2 cm).
Taken from the Capitol dome, this panoramic view shows Washington just after the start of the Civil War. This plate features Pennsylvania Avenue, the main thoroughfare connecting the Capitol and the White House. The White House is just visible in the distance.
Plate 65 View of Washington, DC, looking north-northwest, New Jersey Avenue at far right, June 27, 1861. Salted paper print, 16.9 × 11.1 inches (2.9 × 28.1 cm).
At the center is the intersection of Indiana Avenue and North C Street, the Depot House hotel on the corner. The large building at the right edge was Sen. Stephen Douglas’s house, which in 1862 became Douglas Hospital (2nd and I Streets NW).
Plate 66 Washington, DC, from the roof of the Capitol, looking south, Swampoodle in the distance, June 27, 1861. Salted paper print, 17.4 × 11.4 inches (44.2 × 29 cm).
This view features the area once known as Swampoodle, notorious for its Irish gangs. The tower of the B&O Railway Station is visible on the left. Just to the right of the flagpole is North Capitol Street. The large building in the distance is the Government Printing O ce, built in 1857.
Plate 67 View of Washington, DC, looking southeast, Senate skylight in the foreground, June 27, 1861. Salted paper print, 16.9 × 11.1 inches (42.9 × 28.1 cm).
The northeast part of Washington, overlooking what is now Stanton Park, remained largely undeveloped. In the midst of this relatively rural section of town was Saint Peter’s Catholic cemetery, the white headstones visible just above the post at the center of this view.
The public was acutely aware that there was little possibility that Lincoln’s words would alter the nation’s current course. Having witnessed firsthand the heated debates in the Capitol, Wood had an insider’s view of the storms that were on the horizon. Counting down the exposure and securing the lens cap back in place, he captured a key moment, a tipping of the scales.
On April 16, 1861, less than a month after the inauguration, the war commenced with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. For the first time since his employment at the Capitol, Wood found himself free to explore subjects of his own design. Montgomery C. Meigs, having returned from Florida at the end of 1860, was reinstated to his former position. But the engineer was soon promoted to quartermaster general of the Union Army and thereafter consumed with new duties. Construction projects at the Capitol were largely suspended, the monies for them now reserved for the war effort, and Wood found himself without a supervisor and with a drastically reduced workload. Though he was still focused on the Capitol, this freedom allowed him to widen his thematic perspective. He shifted his eye to the war preparations, exploring the troops and activities around the building. Very few prints from this period have survived, but extant examples indicate that during this period he was using primarily the more portable stereo-camera outfit.
The Capitol had undergone a major transformation since the conflict commenced. Rather than just acting as the epicenter of Northern government, the building had also become home to thousands of soldiers. Requisite support facilities had been put into place, the basement transformed into a massive bakery, and the galleries under the Senate Chamber converted to a granary to support the throngs of new residents. The facilities at the Capitol were “capable of turning out 16,000 loaves daily.” 192 No room
was above repurposing. The House of Representatives quartered the New York Fire Zouaves and the Rotunda, the Eighth Massachusetts Volunteers (see fig. 4.15). 193 The increased numbers and overcrowding caused conditions to deteriorate rapidly. Thomas Ustick Walter wrote,
Things are more unpleasant here every day . . . every street, land, and alley is filled with soldiering . . . the Senate Chamber is alive with lice . . .the bed bugs have travelled up stairs [sic]. . . . There are 30,000 [troops in the city] . . . 4000 in the Capitol . . . and the smell is awful. The building is like one grand water closet, every hole and corner is defiled.” 194
Wood’s images do not give a sense of the conditions within the structure, preferring to document the Capitol’s exterior and immediate surroundings. One image, titled by Benjamin French as The Capitol, a barrack, was taken on May 13, 1862, a mere ten days after Walter wrote his description. While the building is visible in the background, the frame is dominated by drilling National Guard troops, perhaps the earliest image of this longstanding American military force whose mandate was to protect the federal government (see plate 49).195 Their commanding officer, Capt. James A. Tait, stands looking squarely at the camera. Wood approached the scene from one of his preferred perspectives, having taken five previous views from the same location. Concurrently shot images show a preoccupation with repetition of form, the soldiers standing in formation and receding into space. This print, enlarged from a stereoscopic exposure and measuring roughly 11 1/2 × 13 1/2 inches (29.2 × 34.3 cm), is the only one of two large-format prints of troops to have survived. That Wood took the time to print an enlargement reflects his satisfaction with its composition and perhaps indicates that it was intended for a special use or distribution.
Fig. 4.6 Photographer unknown, Fort Monroe, VA. The “Lincoln Gun,” a 15 inch (38.1 cm) Rodman Columbiad, 1864, tonally reversed collodion negative.
Focusing his lens on new subjects, Wood secured a bold image of the Floyyd (sic) Gun near the west gate of the Capitol (see plate 52). 196 The weapon, commissioned in 1860, was the first of its kind, able to fire a 15 inch (38.1 cm) projectile weighing 400 pounds (181.4 kg) over four miles (6.4 km). Harper’s Weekly reported that guns produced the usual way did not allow for a diameter over 10 inches (25.4 cm), as they lacked sufficient