Having spent the last few weeks dismissing the idea of a sub-basement in the Capitol, pendantry insists that I explain that there was, at least briefly, a sub-basement. However, far from being one of the oldest and moldiest of the spaces in that building, it was relatively new – and a good place for the storage of books.
When the east front of the Capitol was expanded in the 1950s, the east staircase was pushed out, as well. This left a space under the stairs open, a space that was below the basement level. This area was divided into eleven rooms (the twelfth space was where the stairs down went) that were parceled out equally to House and Senate, with House receiving HSB-1 to 5, and the Senate SSB-1 to 5. The last space space belonged to neither branch and was given the name EF-30. It was directly below EF-100, though it does not appear to have been used for any particular purpose. In fact, a thorough description of the Capitol published in 1997 shows and labels the space, but makes no effort to describe its use.
The windowless rooms were used for storage and so nobody ever went down there. It was not until November 2002 that two Senate staffers went in, looking for voting records of Walter Mondale. They encountered someone from the Architect of the Capitol’s office who said that these rooms were slated to be demolished to build the Capitol Visitor center. The staffers later returned to save some of the records and found a book marked “1790-1881” in gilt.
Opening it, they discovered well-known names from the earliest days of our country: Burr, Adams, Jefferson. It turned out that this was the book in which Senate expenditures had been recorded for almost 100 years. In the carefully entered names and numbers are listed what each of the Senators earned or was reimbursed. Careful reading brings the time to life, like the fact that Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon must have traveled to D.C. via Cape Horn, as he requested reimbursement for 14,500 miles traveled – which added up to an impressive $5,965 – which would be over 200,000 of today’s dollars.
The historian of the Senate, Richard Baker, held a news conference to describe the find, and the ledger was turned over to the National Archives for conservation and digitizing.
This was the second time the book had been rediscovered, having first come to the attention of the secretary of the Senate Anson McCook in 1884. McCook had it rebound to ensure that it would last, and was then returned to the archives of the Senate – after pasting in an article describing what he had done. The Senate archives in turn had been moved into room SSB1 some time after these rooms were finished in 1962.
It looks like this time the ledger will remain found. It is available online, though where the physical item is currently located is unclear. Either way, the information in it will continue to be analyzed by historians for the foreseeable future.
The subbasement, for its part, was indeed demolished as part of the Capitol Visitor Center project. If you take the Capitol tour, when you are ascending the escalator at the beginning of the tour, you are right where this used to be.