Enoch Wood & Sons dark blue transferware view "Capitol at Washington" presents a view that modern observers may find unrecognizable or at least startling. The building is portrayed at a transitional point: rebuilt from the ruins of the 1814 burning, both wings completed, the center crowned with Bulfinch's low copper dome of 1826--but long before the expansion of the 1850's gave the building the proportions we know.

Even more of a surprise is what we might politely call its pastoral setting. Ellouise Baker Larsen in American Historical Views on Staffordshire China (p.14) maintains that the view demonstrates why the undeveloped Pennsylvania Avenue area was called a "mud hole." The rough rising approach to the building is relieved by a few trees, two isolated figures and several cows.

Wood's well known shell border seems to have been chosen to compliment the deep blue of the printing rather than for any thematic relationship.

Ralph Stevenson & Williams plate "Capitol, Washington," based on a more detailed 1831 print presents a less forbidding view of the new nation's government center. While the building is in the same phase of its construction history, the immediate grounds have been transformed into a commodious park setting. Pedestrians seem to be taking in the sights rather than looking after cattle. [This plate is available elsewhere on this website.]