This is the memory palace.

I'm Nate Demayow.

They had to figure out what to do with the place.

It had been nearly 10 years since Congress had moved out.

They'd used the room, two stories tall, stately sandstone columns, as the main chamber for

the House of Representatives since right after the War of 1812.

The British had burned down the old one.

But Congress was growing out of it.

The number of states had nearly doubled since they'd started meeting in that room, and

this was a country of big dreams.

How are all those future representatives of those as yet unjohn districts and those

as yet unadmitted states going to fit?

So they built an addition to the Capitol and moved into a new chamber in 1857.

Where Congresswomen and men deliberate still.

But the old chamber, the old hall of the House, as they called it, was sitting there collecting

cobwebs.

And stuff, just boxes, extra chairs, dust-covered draperies rolled up and set aside like a piece

of exercise equipment bought off an infomercial and then abandoned in the old bedroom of a kid

off at college.

And no one wanted that.

This was a historic space.

Where the Marquit de Lafayette had dressed Congress during his victory lap of America.

...