Old Supreme Court Chamber

The Old Supreme Court Chamber is the room on the ground floor of the North Wing of the United States Capitol. From 1800 to 1806, the room was the lower half of the first United States Senate chamber, and from 1810 to 1860, the courtroom for the Supreme Court of the United States.

Construction on the North Wing began in 1793 with the laying of the cornerstone by President George Washington. Although interior work was unfinished, the Senate relocated from Philadelphia in November 1800. The interior of the chamber, including an upper level public gallery, was finally completed early in 1805, just in time for the start of the Samuel Chase impeachment trial. Its completion allowed the Federal government to move to Washington, D.C.. The North Wing, as the only completed section of the Capitol, originally hosted both houses of the United States Congress, the Library of Congress, and the Supreme Court.

In addition to the Chase trial, the chamber was the location of President Thomas Jefferson's inauguration in 1801. However, by 1806, the North Wing was already deteriorating from heavy use and required repairs. The Architect of the Capitol at the time, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, decided that the repairs would provide an opportunity to expand room space in the Capitol by dividing the chamber in half. The upper half would serve as a new chamber for the Senate (that area is now known as the Old Senate Chamber), and the lower half would be used for the Supreme Court.

In 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first Morse coded message—which read "?"—from this room.

The size and structure of Latrobe's vaulted, semicircular ceiling were virtually unprecedented in the United States. The room is 50 feet deep and 74 feet, eight inches wide. Construction began in November 1806 with the gutting of the former two-story Senate Chamber and rooms above it, and lasted until 1810. The process was not without tragedy, when an assistant to Latrobe, John Lenthall, Clerk of the Works, was killed upon removing a center wooden ceiling support prematurely against Latrobe's advice. The result was that the unfinished masonry ceiling collapsed crushing Lenthall in the process. Lenthall's death was a setback, not only to construction, but to Latrobe's reputation as an architect, which he struggled to rebuild for the rest of his career.

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