Old Senate Chamber

The Old Senate Chamber is a room in the United States Capitol that was the legislative chamber of the United States Senate from 1810 to 1859 and served as the Supreme Court chamber from 1860 until 1935. It was designed in Neoclassical style and is elaborately decorated. Restored in 1976 as part of United States Bicentennial celebrations, it is preserved as a museum and for the Senate's use.

Located north of the Capitol rotunda on the second floor of the north wing (the Senate side) of the Capitol, the semicircular two-story room is 50 feet wide and 75 feet long, with a half-domed ceiling.

The chamber is overlooked by two visitors' galleries. The Architect of the Capitol reports that the gallery on the east is "supported by eight Ionic columns of variegated marble quarried along the Potomac River", inspired by the Erechtheum of the Acropolis of Athens. Directly above this gallery hangs an 1823 "porthole portrait" of George Washington by Rembrandt Peale, which was purchased for display in the chamber in 1832 upon the centennial of Washington's birth.

The second gallery is the Ladies' Gallery, which follows the curved western wall and is much larger. The Ladies' Gallery is supported by 12 steel columns "encased in cast-iron forms with Corinthian capitals, which were designed to simulate the cast-iron originals." The gallery has a "wrought-iron balcony railing [that] follows the contour of the gallery and is backed by crimson fabric that accentuates the decorative metalwork."

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