Each country has its history and historic quirks and the United States is no exception. The government has a Congress made up of a Senate and a House of Representatives. Here in this article from the history archives of the U.S. House of Representatives is a piece on how elected officials found a place to sit when Congress was in session.
Desk Assignments
There is little documentation of Members choosing desks according to any rhyme or reason. In fact, one 1797 visitor to the House noted that “they do not sit according to states but pell-mell.” An early sketch of the seating arrangement, however, shows that the Members with the longest service had the best seats. In addition, an investigation into a fracas between two Members in 1798 yielded testimony that includes frequent mention of people in their usual seats, indicating that Representatives did claim seats for extended periods, whether informally or formally.
The House’s meeting room took some years to become fixed, and its configuration did not settle itself into a predictable shape until after the rebuilding of the Capitol in 1819, when the first seating chart of the House was published. By 1826, Robert Taylor of Virginia was dissatisfied enough with whatever method was being used. He introduced the first resolution to conduct a lottery to determine desk assignments. Nothing came of his proposal, but it was proposed again several times in the coming years. Each attempt to introduce a lottery was accompanied by fresh ire at the perceived perfidy of those who had unjustly obtained the best seats. An 1841 dispute over desks illuminates the practice of swapping seats. Two days after the end of the first session of the 27th Congress, John Sergeant of Pennsylvania resigned his seat. When the second session began three months later, two Members, freshmen Robert Caruthers of Tennessee and John Dawson of Louisiana, each claimed it. Caruthers said that he and Sergeant had swapped seats toward the end of the session, and Dawson said that transfer was not sanctioned by the rules of the House, and that therefore Sergeant’s seat was abandoned when he resigned. Debate centered on whether trading when one knew one was leaving was fair or “unwarrantable, partial, and unjust” (Dawson). The House determined (by a vote of 122-51) that the exchange was valid, and that it was “a custom which has heretofore been usual among members of the House.”
Although a choice of seats was now provided for by the luck of the draw, some traditional conventions were also followed. Newspapers reported in 1845 that no one chose “Mr. Adams’s seat,” the first indication that some seats were reserved from the lottery for such august Members as John Quincy Adams. By that time, another tradition, that of sitting in party blocs, had begun. Representatives had long chosen seats close to other members of their state delegation, and that slowly turned into a seating by interest and, with the growth of the Whig and Democratic Parties, partisan alliances. Democrats sat to the Speaker’s right. Whigs, and later Republicans, sat to the Speaker’s left. That division continues to the present day.
The end of the Civil War in 1865, and the re-entry of states to the Union over the following several Congresses, posed new problems for the desk lottery. First, a series of special sessions called in the Reconstruction Congresses meant that some states had not chosen their delegations by the time the session, and the lottery, began. Second, as reconstructed states re-entered the Union, their Members often arrived after the lottery. In the 40th Congress, there were no fewer than three separate lotteries. The undesirable back row seats, not needed for several years during the smaller wartime Congresses, were called “the verge of the Government.”
On January 9, 1908, just a month after the desk lottery took place, a new lottery was held. An office building had been constructed for the Members’ use, and offices were chosen by lot. Members were familiar with the method. Again the numbered balls were placed in a box, and again as each Representative’s number was called, he came forward and chose his congressional home. This time, however, rather than sitting down at a desk in the Chamber, he chose an office number, which was marked off on the massive floor plans set up in the well of the House.
Office space made desks in the crowded House Chamber less attractive workspaces, and soon the desks themselves seemed unnecessary. At the start of the 62nd Congress, in 1911, the last desk lottery took place. A blindfolded Page drew the numbers, with only former Speaker Joe Cannon of Illinois given the privilege of choosing a seat beforehand. By the next Congress, in 1913, the desks had been removed and replaced with benches. Today, 446 seats accommodate the Members of the House. Through the 20th century and into the 21st, the office lottery remained the only vestige of the desk assignment tradition.
Image: Thomas U. Walter's elaborate design - U.S. House History Archives