The Capitol Being Turned Into a Fortress Spurs D.C. Push for Statehood

In the days after the Jan. 6 insurrection, a 7-foot-high fence topped with coils of razor wire went up around the U.S. Capitol in Washington. It was described as a temporary measure to protect the seat of Congress for a month or longer. But on Jan. 28, Yogananda Pittman, the acting head of the U.S. Capitol Police, called for making the fence permanent, citing the need for “vast improvements” to security.

Even with the recent violence fresh in their minds, D.C.’s elected leaders denounced the idea. Mayor Muriel Bowser tweeted that the city “will not accept” a long-term fence. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s nonvoting congresswoman, introduced a bill to block it. (The D.C. government has no jurisdiction over the Capitol grounds, which are federal territory, so Bowser can’t simply tell Pittman no.) Local citizens bristled. An online petition against the plan had garnered more than 20,000 signatures as of Feb. 22.

Patrolled by National Guard troops, the current fence is about 3 miles around, encompassing not just the Capitol but adjacent landmarks such as the U.S. Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the U.S. Botanic Garden. It cuts off main thoroughfares, effectively severing areas east of the Capitol from downtown and the west of the city.

Pierre Charles L’Enfant planned Washington in 1791 as the embodiment of American democracy, with its two poles, the Capitol and the White House, each visible from the other, an architectural check on one branch of government gaining too much power. Now both are unapproachable and half hidden behind fortifications. Resentment over the cordoning off of the “people’s house” is feeding into the D.C. statehood movement—which, with the Democrats in charge of the White House and both houses of Congress, now has its most promising (if narrow) political window ever.

Tim Krepp, a tour organizer who’s lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood since 2001, acknowledges the prudence of a short-term fence but says there is “absolutely no appetite” in his community for a permanent one. “This is a wall for us,” he says. “To get anywhere downtown, it’s going to be darn near impossible.” He’s not sure how his children will get to school once in-person classes resume.

Emergency vehicles have to make a detour around the fenced compound, costing critical time, says Charles Allen, the D.C. council member for Ward 6, a swath of the city that abuts the Capitol. Besides that, locals have lost cherished green spaces where they took walks and relaxed, such as the Capitol grounds laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York’s Central Park. “For those of us that live here, it’s a part of our neighborhood,” Allen says.

District residents are upset at the loss, but not altogether surprised. From the bollards that stud many city streets to now-ubiquitous metal detectors inside museums on the National Mall, security apparatus has encroached on more and more of the city since the 1990s, giving spaces that were designed to celebrate open democracy the tense feel of a demilitarized zone.

The escalation started after the 1995 Oklahoma City truck bombing, which killed 168 people and is still the worst domestic terror incident in U.S. history. New federal standards led to the installation of blast-resistant glass and hardened perimeters at D.C.’s many government office buildings. At the behest of the U.S. Secret Service, President Bill Clinton banned vehicle traffic from the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, where inaugural parades traditionally passed.

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