Bringing 1859 Back to the Capitol
Aggie architect Jayashree Shamanna ’94 helped revive a 19th-century corridor while leaving one original detail untouched.
The restored First-Floor Senate Connecting Corridor in the U.S. Capitol features revived wall designs, patterned tile flooring and vaulted ceilings beneath a 1930s chandelier.
Every day, thousands of lawmakers, staff members and visitors walk through the historic hallways of the U.S. Capitol, often passing century-old artwork without noticing the layers of history around them.
But inside the First-Floor Senate Connecting Corridor, Texas A&M University architecture graduate Jayashree Shamanna ’94 helped bring one of those hidden layers back into view. Shamanna, preservation architect for the U.S. Capitol, under the Architect of the Capitol, led a meticulously executed 13-month restoration that returned the 15,000-square-foot corridor to its 1859 splendor.
“Working in the U.S. Capitol Building is a privilege I do not take lightly,” Shamanna said. “The weight of the responsibility I have been handed is enormous, and I work hard to ensure I leave this building better than when I arrived here.”
The 15,000-square-foot corridor, originally built between 1852 and 1859 as part of Thomas U. Walter’s Capitol extension, connects the Capitol’s old wing to the Senate extension. Over time, water damage, chipping plaster and decades of monochromatic paint layers had obscured the original 19th-century artwork attributed to Italian artist Constantino Brumidi and decorative painter Emmerich Carstens.
An Aggie Foundation in Preservation
Shamanna’s path to safeguarding one of the nation’s most iconic landmarks began at the Texas A&M College of Architecture, where she earned her master of science in architecture and a certificate in historic preservation.
Shamanna was one of the first research assistants at the Center for Heritage Conservation, then known as the Historic Resources Imaging Lab. As a graduate student, she worked under Professor David Woodcock to gain early experience in documentation, research and preservation practice.
“My education and work experience gave me the foundation to take this on as a problem-solving quest,” Shamanna said.
Before joining the Architect of the Capitol in 2022, Shamanna spent 15 years in private preservation practice in New York and taught for a decade as a professor of architecture and sustainable preservation.
Finding the Corridor’s 1859 Story
Restoring a building that has evolved across nearly two centuries requires painstaking analysis. Shamanna said it was crucial to decide which period of the building’s history should guide the work.
To establish that “period of significance” for the First-Floor Senate Connecting Corridor, Shamanna and AOC Curator Dr. Michele Cohen, with a team of experts, studied archival records alongside physical evidence from the building itself.
Jayashree Shamanna earned her master’s degree in architecture from Texas A&M and now serves as preservation architect for the U.S. Capitol, under the Architect of the Capitol.
The breakthrough came through paint analysis. Team members extracted 88 physical paint cores from the walls, which are tiny samples that show layers of paint accumulated over time. The team analyzed more than 50 exposures under a microscope.
“For a corridor steeped in history, both in terms of architecture and art, it was important to try and discover what lay under visible paint,” Shamanna said.
The analysis revealed the corridor’s original 1859 paint schemes from the Brumidi era beneath decades of interventions. Once the evidence emerged, the team agreed to restore the hallway to its original identity.
Creating a Dialogue Between Past and Present
Rather than making the restored corridor look uniformly new, Shamanna and her team deliberately left one original lunette — a half-moon-shaped painted area above an arched window — untouched and faded. Surrounded by recreated frescoes, the worn 170-year-old original section gives visitors a direct visual connection to the corridor’s past.
“It is a great teaching moment and a visual connection to what was,” Shamanna said. “In the fast-moving world that we live in, this creates moments to pause and contemplate the history of the building.”
The restoration required both traditional craftsmanship and modern environmental standards.
Craftspeople used a traditional three-coat lime plaster over the original brickwork, while the team selected eco-friendly, water-based paints in keeping with AOC environmental and safety requirements. Decorative painters practiced intricate designs on canvas for weeks before applying them to the corridor walls with specialized adhesives.
Shamanna said the team also had to complete the work inside one of the nation’s busiest buildings. Crews created protected pathways for people moving through the corridor during the day. Disruptive tasks were scheduled outside peak hours to accommodate daily Capitol operations.
The team completed the major scaffold-accessible construction work in time for the 2025 presidential inauguration. The corridor returned to normal operations while decorative finishing continued, and the 13-month restoration wrapped in June 2025.
The work also required collaboration across trades, including carpenters, insulators, painters, masons, electricians and plumbers.
“It took a village, and the AOC as a whole answered that call,” Shamanna said. “Because of my wonderful colleagues here at the AOC, and my education and work experience, the project was a big success.”
Thanks to that village, one of the original lunettes remains above an arched window. Not restored, but preserved. In the corridor, it will serve as a quiet reminder of the history her team worked to protect.
AOC Decorative Painter Brian Lindsey is working on trompe l’oeil details and painting on the newly re-plastered walls.
