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CAPITOL EAST FRONT CONSTRUCTION

Senator MONRONEY. Obviously, when you were building the east front, somebody must have left some records as to the actual thickness of the walls that were torn down. You did not remove all of the wall, but you had to remove a part of it to open the doors and the various parts that were transformed from windows.

Mr. STEWART. We have all of that information.

Senator MONRONEY. Do you keep records to doublecheck the construction of the east and west front against your core borings? Mr. STEWART. Yes, sir.

TESTS AND SOIL AND CORE BORINGS

Senator MONRONEY. Were only four core borings made?

Mr. CAMPIOLI. No; there were 17 test pits, 11 soil borings, and 63 core borings.

Senator MONRONEY. That went from the outer wall through the inner face?

Mr. CAMPIOLI. Yes, sir.

Senator MONRONEY. Was that about a 6-inch sample?

Mr. CAMPIOLI. We didn't go clear through on all of them, as we would have disturbed the occupants had we done so. We measured the wall overall from the inside face to the outside face, and we stopped the corings just short of the interior, in order that we would not punch through into a Senator's or Congressman's office.

PHOTOGRAPH SELECTION FOR RECORD

Senator MONRONEY. I think some of these photographs should be selected. I would like to ask the committee to select perhaps a half a dozen of them to include in the record, of particularly the west portico, to illustrate this in the hearings.

USE OF OYSTER SHELL LIME

Mr. STEWART. There is another feature, Senator, if I might add and that is the lack of proper material at the time the central section was built, at which time there were no lime deposits, according to the information we received from the Coast and Geodetic Survey group. There were no lime deposits within 600 miles of Washington when it was built, so our forefathers, when they built this section of the Capitol probably had to go back to the lime they could extract from oyster shells, and such like.

We can still find pieces of the oyster shell in the mortar when we have made some examinations.

Senator MONRONEY. In other words, it was not as finely ground up as cement would be?

Mr. STEWART. That is right.

We have no records of that, so we do not know if this was sand taken out of a bank, whether it was washed or dredged out of a river. We have no way at all to know, but we do see now with the samples of mortar that we have taken out that you can take some pieces and crumble them in your fingers, which shows there is no cohesion at all in the mortar, and very little especially in the arches.

Senator MONRONEY. You didn't have anything such as cement in

those days; did you?

Mr. STEWART. No. It was not unusual in the beginning of our country to use the oyster shells.

Senator MONRONEY. Do you have any questions, Senator Hayden? Chairman HAYDEN. No, sir; I have no questions.

Senator MONRONEY. Senator Proxmire?

Senator PROXMIRE. No questions.

(The photographs selected follow :)

[graphic]

FIGURE 1.-General view of west center wing and portico.

[graphic]

FIGURE 3.-Open joint between dropped and cracked stones of architrave south of the 4th column from the north end of the west portico.

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FIGURE 2.-View of architrave over columns of west portico looking south and showing dropped stones causing misalignment.

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FIGURE 4.-Open joint between dropped stones and crack following blind dovetail

behind.

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