Congress’ 1st Capitol Meeting Is Marked

U.S. lawmakers marked the first meeting of Congress to take place in the U.S. Capitol building, planting a maple tree they said they hoped would still be around 200 years from now. In 1800, the U.S. Congress moved from Philadelphia to Washington and in November the House of Representatives and the Senate took up residence in the yet unfinished Capitol. “In November of the year 1800, this Capitol rose out of chaos, it rose out of a marsh, it rose out of an area that was once basically uninhabited,” House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said at the tree planting ceremony. The tree, a Marmo Freeman maple that is a hybrid between a red and silver maple, was grown at a nursery just one mile from Hastert’s home in Yorkville, Ill., he said.