Storing flour in the US Capitol 1861

Flour barrels everywhere - “I shall have no visitors.”
Jan 6 - Five years. Never forget the horrific attack on the police and the Capitol building in 2021. I never will. Staff included the teenage pages - one of my sons was a page during the summer some years ago. I spent several years researching the Civil War bake ovens in the Capitol and wrote a booklet in 2014.

During the first days of what would become the Civil War, there were real fears of an imminent attack. They were no longer able to get goods from Alexandria and Virginia, so barrels of flour were collected from warehouses and ships in Georgetown and the city to be stored in the more secure Capitol.

“What crypts and dens, caves and cellars there are under that great structure! And barrels of flour in every one of them this month of May 1861.” [Atlantic Monthly July 1861]

Barrels of flour were stacked high in “Washington’s Crypt” under the Rotunda. The stores were protected by double picket lines of soldiers outside and the entrances to the building were barricaded with hundreds of barrels of cement and iron plates destined to complete the dome. [Harper's Weekly May 25, 1861 first two images]

Although the two new wings were completed, the center dome was not. Thomas U. Walter, the fourth Architect of the Capitol who designed the plans for the building extension and dome, moved his office to the upper floor. “Most of the passages in the Building are piled up to the ceilings with bbls. [barrels] of flour, pork, beef, fish, crackers do.[ditto], temporary doors are every where put up, each of which is guarded by a sentinel, so that it is quite difficult to reach the upper rooms, for any one, much less for a stranger – one thing is certain, I shall have no visitors.” [Walter, Thomas. May 6, 1861 letter]

Blog posts about the US Capitol HERE

U.S. Capitol Historical Society HERE zoom tapes HERE.
How Thanksgiving Became a Holiday: From the Wampanoag and Pilgrims to Washington and Lincoln HERE, The History and Mythology of the "First Thanksgiving" HERE, Bootleggers and Gangsters…Prohibition 18th & 21st Amendments HERE, “Prohibition in Washington, DC HERE
Metalworkers Who Shaped America's Capitol Dome HERE

CALENDAR OF VIRTUAL FOOD HISTORY TALKS HERE

©2025 Patricia Bixler Reber
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