To commemorate the completion of the statue and its crowning of the dome, officials organized a ceremony with a 35-gun military salute echoed by salutes from the 12 forts ringing the federal city. ![]() As a result, he oversaw the remainder of the its construction. Earlier, a contract dispute had threatened to halt the project’s progress until Reid determined how to complete the complicated casting of the statue. The marble is crushed into a fine powder resin is added to hold the fine particles together and. This beautiful reproduction of the magnificent figure that stands sentry on top of the Dome is offered in some of the original marble from the East Front of the Capitol. When the final cast of the Statue of Freedom was hoisted to the top of the Capitol Dome. Standing more than 19 feet tall, the figure called. Freedom’s story contains an ironic twist a slave named Philip Reid played an integral part in placing Freedom atop the dome. The Statue of Freedom is the crowning glory of the U.S. In 1862 President Lincoln issued a proclamation freeing all the slaves in Washington D.C., including Reid. On December 2, 1863, a bronze statue was placed atop the dome of the United States Capitol Building. Although construction on the dome began in 1856, the dome and its final accouterments were not in place until December 2, 1863. When Secretary of War Jefferson Davis objected to the allegorical allusion to a freed Roman slave, the artist revised the drawing to feature a statue with a helmet. Hoisted into place while the country was divided by the Civil War, the bronze statue designed and sculpted by American sculptor Thomas Crawford was created as the crowning feature of the building’s new cast-iron Dome. ![]() The second sketch of the statue featured a woman with a liberty cap. The Statue of Freedom has stood atop the United States Capitol Dome since 1863. The statue was to be the crown jewel of the dome atop the Capitol Rotunda. ![]() Meigs, supervising engineer of the Capitol expansion, received the conceptual drawings from Thomas Crawford, an American neoclassical artist, for the Statue of Freedom. Image courtesy of Library of Congress On top of the Capitol Dome, the Statue of Freedom faces east away from the National Mall and the White House.
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