Capitol Stones Should Remain in Park, D.C.’s House Member Says

Washington D.C.’s nonvoting member of Congress said she opposes a plan to remove historic Capitol stones from Rock Creek Park and have them transferred to a warehouse.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said the Capitol stones, removed from the East Portico in 1958-62 renovations, should be turned into a more formal exhibit in Rock Creek Park, where they were dumped likely in the 1970s. Norton said she’s heard from constituents who like taking their kids to the stones, which have turned into an unsanctioned attraction a short distance from a walking trail in the park.

Old Capitol Stones to be Stored Away After Decades Piled in Park

“I’d like them kept in Rock Creek Park,” Norton said in a phone interview after Bloomberg Government reported that the stones are going to be moved. “People go there anyway to look at them. And I think forming a more appropriate exhibit at Rock Creek Park would be the perfect place for them.”

Norton said she’s talking with her staff about what she can do about the plan to remove the stones.

Al Drago/Bloomberg

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) opposes a plan to remove old Capitol stones from Rock Creek Park.

Architect of the Capitol and National Park Service officials told Bloomberg Government they’re removing the stones. They’ll go to a warehouse at Fort Meade in Maryland, where the public won’t have access to them, according to Kiren Marshall, senior communications specialist for the Architect of the Capitol.

Norton said she wants the stones to be preserved for posterity and that leaving them outside in the park wouldn’t damage them.

“They’re stones, after all, and so they were meant to withstand the weather,” she said.

(Photo by Kyle Trygstad/Bloomberg Government)

Children play on stones from the Capitol renovation in Rock Creek Park.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jack Fitzpatrick in Washington at jfitzpatrick@bgov.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bennett Roth at broth@bgov.com; Loren Duggan at lduggan@bgov.com