Architecture
The Architect of the Capitol, J. George Stewart, with the approval of the House Office Building Commission, selected the firm of Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson of Philadelphia to design a stripped-down classical building in architectural harmony with other Capitol Hill structures. However, while the interior design of the other House Office Buildings retains decor one would expect to see in House Office Buildings (with cherry wood paneling, brass railings, and marble floors), the Rayburn building possesses design style parallel to that of the 1960s, with chrome push bars, clocks, and elevators, and space-age fluorescent lighting fixtures.
The Capitol Subway System, an underground transportation system, connects the building to the Capitol. Pedestrian tunnels also connect the Rayburn building to the Capitol and to the Longworth House Office Building. This system allows the Rayburn building to be connected to most of the Congressional office buildings on Capitol Hill via tunnel (the Ford House Office Building is freestanding and attached to no other structures by tunnel).
For construction of the Rayburn House Office Building, the Congressional bill appropriated $2 million plus "such additional sums as may be necessary." Such additional sums eventually totaled $88 million. Congressional leaders inserted a gymnasium into the building plans, a fact that was not publicly known at the time of construction. The gym is below the sub-basement level, in a level of the underground parking garage, and according to The Hill, a capitol hill newspaper, "features dozens of cardio machines outfitted with TV screens, an array of Cybex weightlifting machines and free weights."
Read more about this topic: Rayburn House Office Building
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)
“All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)