Ledge-islative Re-View: The Wilson Building, Seen from the Outside, Five Stories Up • Council of the District of Columbia

Photographer Colin Winterbottom at The John A. Wilson Building, Washington DC. Photograph credit: Matthew Girard

An exhibit of photographs taken from outside the John A. Wilson Building, largely from ledges and scaffolding five stories up, is finally open to the public. See the breathtaking sculpture lining the roofline of the District’s city hall and statehouse up close, as no one has seen it since the building’s creation over a century ago.

Imagine lovingly designing and sculpting monumental, expressive, and minutely detailed human statues.

Imagine these sculptures are then placed on the exterior of a building’s top floor, a hundred plus feet up, doomed to never be seen up close by the general public again.

Over a century passes.

Then, imagine a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to finally photograph these sculptures up close and personal, while perched on scaffolding and ledges five stories up.

Finally unveiled to the public, this photography exhibit has been in the works since 2016.

Beginning that year and continuing through 2019, while a repair and preservation project at the Wilson Building meant that it would be intermittently encapsulated in scaffolding, the photographs were taken.

Our photographer for the project was Colin Winterbottom. Perhaps best known for his prominent recent work photographing the District’s most beloved landmark buildings—the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the National Cathedral, and others—his work is distinguished by the fact that it is taken from scaffolding, during construction and preservation projects.

Through his expertise and comfort working in this unusual venue, he is able to make the most of the once-in-a-lifetime vantage points the scaffolding provides. By doing so, despite our familiarity with these buildings, he allows us to see them in a brand new way.

The sculptures were designed by Italian immigrant Adolfo de Nesti. We ended up with far more magnificent sculpture than had been planned or budgeted for before the building’s construction began in 1904. A newspaper account from the time said that de Nesti was the lowest bidder for the project because he “did not figure on a price for his genius in designing and making the models,” instead simply charging hourly for his time.

The sculptures were carved from marble (based on de Nesti’s full-size plaster models) by Ernest Bairstow, an English immigrant. Each of the 28 9-foot-tall figures ringing the Wilson Building’s roofline was carved by Bairstow from a single piece of marble, using the then new-to-Washington technology of compressed air to power his tools. Bairstow would later go on to carve the text of the Gettysburg Address into the wall of the Lincoln Memorial.

The monumental figures you see atop the building represent Sculpture, Commerce, Painting, Engineering, Statesmanship, Agriculture, Architecture, and Music.

Evoking the scaffolding and ledges that photographer Winterbottom perched on to take his photos, the photos have been installed on stair landings from the building’s ground floor up to the fifth floor. To best discover the exhibit, enter the Wilson Building through the main Pennsylvania Avenue entrance (Monday to Friday, 9AM to 5:30PM, masks required), proceed to walk up either of the building’s two grand staircases, then cross in front of the Council Chamber to the opposite staircase before descending again. Photos are installed on the landings below the first floor, as well as those both above and below the fourth floor. Finally, echoing the larger-than-life sculpture located outside the building’s fifth floor, two truly monumental photographs are installed atop both staircases, visible from the prominent principal hallway outside the Council Chamber.

Please feel free to contact Josh Gibson, the Council’s Director of Communications and Public Information Officer, with any questions. Interviews with photographer Colin Winterbottom can be arranged by request.