I do not think that his remains were ever meant to be put there..........great vestibule.........entrance way............................connecting to everything else...........but it is above ground level......look out the side windows when u go up the escalators from the visitors center........u first enter in a room just in front of the crypt...........to your right........and down a little is the orig. chamber of the supreme court............straight ahead is the crypt..............that whole floor is not ground level or below it.......as a basement would be..........it is around where a 2nd story in a house would be..........also..........look east out of the level of the capital rotunda...........before u walk down the stair case........two flights of stairs to the crypt..............right by a painting of Hudson bay with a rainbow in it..........u see the Supreme court.......Jeff. library of congress................etc................it is at the level......of the where the east side center exterior stairs are......so when u look east out of the hall way with the windows facing the supreme court, etc.........u will see the outside patio...........to where the stairs lead.........that was the way in before they built the visitor's center after 9/11/2001..........i remember.............esp. b/c when i was a college student i would take some of my younger cousins to tour dc..............we just walked up those stairs straight into the capital rotunda.................




Such a description might also have sounded odd to the Capitol's first architects and visitors. On a 1797 plan by Dr. William Thornton, the Crypt is labeled "Grand Vestibule;" on an 1806 plan, Benjamin Henry Latrobe calls it "General Vestibule to all the Offices." In 1824, a report of the Commissioners of Public Buildings refers to it as the "lower rotundo." By 1829, however, the current term appears to have come into popular usage. In discussing "the round apartment under the Rotundo," an article in the Nashville Republican & State Gazette notes that the room "is similar to the substructions of the European Cathedrals, and may take the name of Crypt from them." After that time, the nameCrypt appears consistently in guide books, reports and correspondence.