We Have Never Been To America,

but if we did visit there are so many places we would like to see,

amongst them the United States Capitol Building, naturally we would take the guided tour, and if possible revisit at our own time and pace to take a more thorough look at the interior, in any event one thing we would be doing is counting the number of miniature doors that we can find there, I guess most Americans that have visited know all about what lies behind the doors, but for everyone else there is a tragic story to be told, the story and photographs from www.aoc.gov,

'The correct explanation for their existence begins with a fire on Christmas Eve 1851. At that time the Library of Congress was housed in the Capitol Building. That morning as John Jones, a guard, was walking on the Capitol Grounds he noticed a flicker through the Library windows. Jones had no key to the room, so he was forced to break the door down. Once inside, he discovered a small fire. Water was not readily available in the building, so Jones had to run downstairs to find some. By the time he returned, the fire had spread throughout the two-story Library. Seven fire stations responded to the alarms. Firefighters worked all day and night and into Christmas morning to extinguish the flames.

The fire devastated the Library's collection: thirty-five thousand volumes were destroyed. Approximately two-thirds of the books purchased from Thomas Jefferson were gone. Manuscripts, maps and other artwork had been consumed by the fire, which was later determined to have been caused by a spark from the fireplace in the room below the Library. During the investigation, Jones testified that the fire could have been easily extinguished had there been water nearby. The fear of future fires motivated Congress to fund a critically needed reliable water supply for Washington, D.C.Captain Montgomery C. Meigs of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was assigned by the War Department to manage the project. Meigs had a remarkable career. He helped build many D.C. landmarks, including Arlington National Cemetery, the Capitol Building extension and the modern Dome of the Capitol Building. Arguably his most significant engineering achievement was the Washington Aqueduct. The elaborate system brought fresh water from the Potomac River at Great Falls into the federal city and into the pipes hidden behind the Capitol's small doors. These small doors and the water sources they housed, are found in several places in the Capitol Building, they were multipurpose. They stood ready to provide water to prevent any future fire from spreading, but they also ensured the mud tracked in from Washington's dirt streets and footpaths could be easily cleaned from the Capitol's floors. That is why the doors stand only about 30 inches tall: they conceal low, shallow closets where workers filled pails of water to mop the floors.' 

all we now have to do to add some fun when we visit, is count how many miniature doors we can find, unless someone already has a list of where in the building and how many there exactly are?