Montgomery Meigs and Photography
At the U. S. Capitol

By Wayne Firth
Presented at National Building Museum, Washington, DC
September 20, 1996

     In 1856 the world was in the midst of a visual revolution. It had been only seventeen years since the first permanent photographic image was made. People no longer had to rely on artists to portray the world, now the camera could give an objective and accurate view of the world. Since 1839, the primary method of photography was the daguerreotype, a process which was limited by the fact that each image was a unique, fragile, usually small object that could not be easily duplicated. But in 1851 that changed with the introduction of the collodion process. Sometimes known as wet plate photography, this new process produced a negative image on glass from which an unlimited number of paper copies could be printed.     At first, photography played to a rather narrow audience. The photographic community was dominated by a small number of "operators", as photographers were called, and entrepreneurs who generally viewed photography as a novelty to be exploited. Its primary use was portraiture although photography was increasingly being used to document exotic lands and architecture with the views being sold much like today's postcards. More practical uses of photography where being developed and in the 1850's the Crimean War was the first war to be documented photographically.
     One person who was observing this new photographic process from a distance was Capt. Montgomery C. Meigs of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers who was in charge of construction at the U. S. Capitol. The Capitol was getting a new cast iron dome and new extensions that would house new chambers for the House and the Senate. Late in 1855, Meigs began to think about using photography after seeing a demonstration of the process by his friend Titian Peale. On January 2, 1856 Meigs ordered books on the process of photography from New York. On January 26, 1856 during a visit with Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, Meigs discussed the use of photography to copy the drawings of the Capitol. Davis approved of the idea and on January 28, 1856, Meigs followed up with a letter to Davis requesting "approval of my purchase of the necessary Photographic Books, instruments and materials for copying the drawings of the Capitol Extension." He proposed that it would be more cost effective to have engineering drawings photographed and reduced rather than pay a draftsman to copy the drawings by hand.

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