People Deserve Access To 'the Hall of the People'

When the newly elected Congress arrives in January, lawmakers will occupy a place where the front door has been permanently locked to keep ordinary citizens out. The experience of gaining access to the Capitol and visiting what has been called "the Hall of the People" has been significantly diminished and is about to get worse.

Five years after Sept. 11, 2001, in an overzealous concession to security, our U.S. Capitol, a building the public owns, is now accessible only through a side entrance. The permanent solution to access, rushed into construction after Sept. 11, is even worse. A new visitors center will end the experience that the designers of the Capitol intended. What had been an open-air ascent into domed majesty will become a forced march through an underground bunker.

Walking up the great center stairs of the Capitol is now an anachronism. Those steps no longer lead to the seat of our government. Their functionality gone, they are a sad cul-de-sac, a restricted path to nothing but a locked door.

It hasn't always been this way. Security concerns surrounding our public buildings became an issue soon after the inception of our nation, but in no other era have we been denied direct access. Our leaders used to be unwilling to allow security concerns to trump their commitment to an open society.

After the War of 1812, President James Madison did not fortify the White House and the Capitol against invasion. During the Civil War, the Lincolns continued to live in Washington, despite the city's sympathy for the Confederacy, even holding open houses every New Year's and Fourth of July.

As an architect and immigrant, I remember falling in love with this great and complicated nation when I arrived from South Africa by way of Scandinavia in 1964. Standing in the Rotunda, surrounded by paintings telling the story of the American Revolution, I felt privileged to be in the heart of the world's most enduring democracy.

Now, Americans' freedom to walk up the Capitol steps and into the Capitol Building has been revoked. A rare exception? Caskets on their way to lying in state in the Rotunda.

Any erosion of public access to our public buildings must be watched carefully. Access stands for something more significant than mere renovations. In our nation's capital, architecture matters. Symbols matter. The decisions we make about how citizens interact with government matter.

Certainly we all recognize the need for adequate security to protect those who work in the Capitol as well as facilities to accommodate those who visit. Whether the massive visitors center is the best way to do that is largely a moot point. But surely we must preserve reasonable access to the Capitol as intended by the visionaries who designed it.

A recent poll suggested that only 16 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, tying the all-time low. Perhaps, if the new Congress wants to improve its image with the people it serves, it could start by finding a way to reopen the front door of the wonderful edifice it occupies to the citizens who own it.

-- Allan Greenberg

Alexandria

The writer is an architect with offices in Washington, New York and Greenwich, Conn.