Free Tours By Foot

disclaimer: i'm obviously biased. i work for this company.

We keep growing! Our DC By Foot tours are going grand and adding a new tour this summer: The All In One, which isn't really All In One, it's a combination of our Tidal Basin and Monuments tour. To make it All In One, we'd have to add Arlington Cemetery, too. And maybe we will but not for now.

Our Free Tours By Foot - New York is growing as well. Every few weeks we add a new tour it seems. And now we're rolling out bike tours! pun intended.

Free Tours By Foot - Philadelphia is taking DC's cue and adding a Ghost Tour and with all the "ghosts" houses there the archetectire should add to the creepiness.

Our newest addition Free Tours By Foot - New Orleans has been getting great reviews! We'll be adding a Ghost Tour there as well! Now that's a good place for a Ghost Tour.

Free Tours By Foot - Boston is at the top of our todo list and we're busy getting ready to open it up.

Where else should we go?!

Capitol Building

DC is the Capital. That big white dome is the Capitol.

The Capitol's location was decided by Pierre L'Enfant in his layout of DC because it was on a hill, Jenkins Hill, now known as Capitol Hill, or the reason I have to take the long way home because I can't physically bike up Constitution Ave.

And who works in the Capitol? Or... is suppose to be working? Congress. Our two houses, House of Representatives on the South side and Senate on the Left side. If either wing has a flag flying, that house is in session. The flag in the middle is always flying. We are a very patriotic country.

There are 540 rooms in the Capitol, but yet Congress requires at least three large office buildings for each house. But we don't want congress men to have to walk across the street do we? NO! So there are tunnels. But we don't want congressmen to have to walk... at all, do we? NO! So those tunnels have trams! Lazy.

The large building we have today is not the original building. The Capitol was started in 1793 and went through a whole mess of trouble before it was completed. Design problems and scandals, collapses and uneven floors. It was partially burnt in 1814 by the British. And it was too small. It take off the two wings and the dome, that's the original building. You can actually see where the stone changes color a bit to mark the spot.

It was in the 1850s that we added the two wings. In 1863 the new dome was completed. Abraham Lincoln continued construction on the dome despite the Civil War in show that the union was still going strong.

The Dome itself has 36 columns around it's base for the 36 states during it's completion and above that 13 columns for the 13 original colonies. There is a small turret at the very top that houses a lantern. If either house is working past dark, normal business hours, they turn the lantern on... I guess to show us that they are working still? I work past dark all the time and I don't want any extra acknowledgment but they are a needy bunch.

The very top of the dome holds a great statue. The Statue of Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace. She is 19.5 tall and is the tallest statue of a person by law in the district. She is faces East so that we can say the sun never sets on the face of freedom. She is also missing something. Something you normally find on statues.... pigeon poop. The Capitol Dome has electric wires that shoot out pulses to keep birds from landing there. So the sun never sets on the face of Freedom and birds never poop on the head of freedom.

The original design was for her to be wearing a liberty cap (think Smurf hat) that was a representative of freedom - freed slaves, revolutionaries, etc. But Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War at the time. As the future President of the CSA, not a big fan of freed slaves? So he vetoes that and we get this odd feather headdress to represent our native pasts. You know the people we murdered and gave small pox infested blankets too and stole their land to build our buildings... yeah, but at least we honored them by repeating their headfashions on top of those buildings.

And in an ironic twist of American history - the Statue of Freedom was forged by... a slave.

Supreme Court, hold the tomatos.

Taco Bell fans get it.

What  visitors tend to mix up is the name of a building and the name of it's occupants. The Supreme Court is ... the court. The all-powerful judges that interpret a document written more than 200 years ago by a completely different class of people. The United States Supreme Court Building is the columned structure across the street from the Capitol.

The reason the distinction is important is the nearly 150 years that separate the establishment of the two.

THE COURT

The Supreme Court was establish when America was established- for the second time - under the Constitution. We've all heard about the three branches of government and checks and balances, this is one them - Judicial.

It's kind of like when you and your sister have a fight and when you asked dad and he said it was okay, but then your sister argued back to mom. And we all know who really holds the power in a house ;) Technically, it's called appellate. It decides mostly appeals - a lower court ruled one way, someone didn't like it, so they went higher and higher until the Supreme Court issues the final say. Though, it does have jurisdiction over some kinds of cases. State vs. State: the boundary that separate Mississippi and Louisiana is a river, a big hurricane comes and the course of the river changes, does that boundary change, too? (Of course, Louisiana has civil law where as every other state has common law so ... who knows how that would pan out?!)

There are 9 justices, though that number has fluctuated through the earlier years. One Chief Justice and 8 Associate Justices.

You do not need to be American, of a certain age, education, rank, class, with a certain amount of experience or even a lawyer. The only requirements to be a Justice is to be appointed by the President and approved by Congress. And you serve for life, or until you retire.

At the moment (Feb 2012) they are Chief Justice is John Roberts. Associates are Scalia, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Sotomeyer, Kagan.

That is the Supreme Court. They meet in the Courtroom of the Supreme Court Building. So when visiting DC, you may not visit the Supreme Court, but you may visit it's seat.

THE BUILDING

The Supreme Court followed to justices and they followed the government. They met in The Merchants Exchange in NYC, in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, in the Capitol in D.C.

We have these beautiful buildings of white marble and columns built in the late 1700s-1800s. But this classical temple of justice was built in ... 1935. Not old at all. It was Chief Justice William Howard Taft who got permission to have it's own building. He had a bit of sway, being a past president and all.

The grandeur of the building is thanks to Architect Cass Gilbert and is made of American marble. Except the Courtrooms 24 columns, they are Italian Marble personally guaranteed as the best by none other than ... Mussolini. I just find that kind of funny seeing as we'd be at war with in a few years, but he selected the marble for the highest court in our country. (Ok, probably not personally selected)

Most of the Justices of the time did not like the new building. They thought it too grand and audacious. If they building was going to look like that, they "might as well ride in on elephants!"

The building has 5 floors, the fifth being the "highest court in the land" ... no, not that Court. It's where the basketball court is! Yeah, I made that joke.

The west facade that most people see as the "front" of the building depicts a variety of seated figures including Cass Gilbert and Robert Ingersoll Aitken. Who are they? The architect and the sculptor, a little presumptuous if I do say so myself. Others are Taft, other justices whose names I've never heard of, Marshall and three allegorical figured of Liberty, Order, Authority.


But what is great about this building, in all it's beautiful, complicated sculptures is that it was completed on time and $94,000 under budget. Which it returned. Very un-DC government building like.