A Veritable 'Who's That?' of U.S. History

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The statues make up a unique, if unheralded, group: five Native Americans; one Catholic priest, Eusebio F. Kino; a Catholic nun, Mother Joseph; a Supreme Court justice, Edward Douglass White Jr.; an early female college professor, Maria L. Sanford, known as the "best loved woman in Minnesota." A 24th statue, that of Helen Keller, the champion of the disabled, will be added later.

Michael Culver, director of congressional and external relations for the Architect of the Capitol, said officials believe the chosen statues are ones "that would be most relevant to people who would be visiting."

The visitor center -- a three-level complex with fountains, spiral staircases, skylights and theaters -- is expected to draw as many as 3 million people its first year. That's double the 1.5 million who visited the Capitol last year, a spokeswoman for the visitor center said. Diane K. Skvarla, Senate curator, said one goal of the move was to make the sculptures more accessible to the public.

The statues in the collection make up one of the oldest groups of public sculpture in the country, according to historian Lachin. She said they reflect the sensibilities of many eras in U.S. history.

The collection has been criticized in the past for lacking in its representation of women and minorities.

There is only one sculpture of a black person in the Capitol complex, the bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the main rotunda, which is not part of the collection, according to the architect's office.

But the eclectic group being moved into the new limelight is diverse.

It includes dramatic bronzes of Nevada's Sarah Winnemucca, a 19th-century Paiute educator, translator and spokeswoman for Native Americans, and Chief Washakie, a renowned Shoshone warrior who was another powerful advocate for Native Americans.

Other striking statues are those of the famed Hawaiian king Kamehameha I, wearing a gilded cape and helmet, and New Mexico's seven-foot-tall pink marble image of Po'pay, a Pueblo Indian leader who directed an uprising against the Spanish in 1680. Both have been moved. To address Hawaiian concerns, the six-ton statue of Kamehameha I has been placed beneath a skylight, so no one will be walking above his head.

More conventional are the statues of Utah's Farnsworth, the homespun 20th-century inventor and television pioneer, depicted with his sleeves rolled up, and Idaho's Sen. William Edgar Borah, a strident isolationist, shown with a clenched fist and wearing a double-breasted coat.

"Part of what you've got there is American history," said Skvarla, the Senate curator. "Some of it's not pretty. But it's part of American history."

The statuary collection was authorized by Congress in 1864 as a way to promote reconciliation at the close of the Civil War. Each state was invited to send statues of two important people for display in the Capitol.

Virginia sent sculptures of George Washington and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Maryland has given statues of Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Colonial figure John Hanson. None are to be moved to the visitor center. The District commissioned two statues, of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and architect Pierre L'Enfant, but, in a sore spot for the District, legislation is required for them to join the collection.

The statues were first arrayed in what is now the Capitol's pink-and-gold-domed Statuary Hall, the old chamber of the House of Representatives. Rhode Island contributed the first, that of Revolutionary War Gen. Nathanael Greene, in 1870.

The hall eventually was crammed three-deep with figures -- 65 by 1933 -- and was called a "chamber of horrors." The collection was redistributed around the Capitol that year and again in 1976. Many of the more famous stayed in Statuary Hall, but others wound up crowded into the so-called Hall of Columns or elsewhere in the building.