Old Senate Chamber - Use By The Senate and Supreme Court

Use By The Senate and Supreme Court

The chamber was completed in 1810, after Architect of the Capitol Benjamin Henry Latrobe divided the original Senate chamber in the North wing into two rooms, one on the first floor and the other on the second. The bottom-floor chamber—known as the Old Supreme Court Chamber—was put into use as a chamber for the Supreme Court in 1810. In 1860, after the Senate moved to its current quarters, the Supreme Court moved upstairs into Old Senate Chamber, where it sat until the completion of the United States Supreme Court building in 1935.

In 1810—the same year the Supreme Court moved into the lower floor—the Senate moved into the second-story chamber. For the next 49 years, the Senate used the chamber until the completion of the north wing extension in 1859, when they moved to their present-day chamber. At its height, 64 senators met in the chamber.

Many noted events that occurred in the chamber. Among them are the passage of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the 1830 Webster–Hayne debate, and the Webster-Clay-Calhoun debates over the Compromise of 1850. In 1856, Representative Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death with a cane in the chamber. The attack occurred three days after Sumner, a strident abolitionist, attacked pro-slavery politicians, including Brooks' relative Senator Andrew Butler, in a speech. Brooks attacked Sumner as a matter of honor, beating him with a cane and injuring him so badly that he was absent from the Senate for nearly three years as he recovered.

Until 1976, the room was used for meetings, irregular congressional committee hearings, and as temporary quarters while the modern Senate chamber was being repaired in 1940, 1949, and 1950.