Capitol Confusion

Frederick Law Olmsted must be spinning in his grave. The United States Capitol grounds that he conceived has a new look, thanks to the brand new Capitol Visitor Center.

Designed by the Washington firm RTKL Associates, the Capitol Visitor Center is vast underground complex of hallways, exhibition rooms, restaurants, and corridors. The entrance to the Center is on the east side of the Capitol building, and Olmsted's landscape has been lavished with fountains, seating, and an imposing promenade. Architecture critics are not pleased.

Catesby Leigh at the Wall Street Journal calls the Capitol Visitor Center a "banal exercise in modernistic, ersatz classicism." Philip Kennicott at the Washington Post calls it a "historical and aesthetic jumble, a nonsensical place and a gross disfigurement of one of this country's most important and iconic buildings."

Can it really be that bad? Marc Fisher, who also writes the Washington Post, doesn't think so. Sure, the Center was obscenely expensive to build. But as a contemporary museum of American civics and government, it's a "smash hit," Fisher says.

About the US Capitol:

• The Capitol Visitor Center
• The US Capitol Building

What the Critics Say:

• In the Nation's Capital, An Uninviting Addition (Wall Street Journal)
• The Capitol Addition That Takes Too Much Away (Washington Post)
• D.C.'s New Underground Jewel (Washington Post)

^{Photo of U.S. Capitol Building, ClipArt.com}