U.S. Capitol Ceremonial Cornerstone

A ceremonial cornerstone for the United States Capitol was laid on September 18, 1793, in a Masonic ceremony presided over by President George Washington, marking the formal start of Capitol construction. That original laying and the inscribed stone are documented in contemporary accounts of the Capitol's construction. Subsequent 19th-century expansions altered the building fabric and the original stone’s relationship to the exterior, but the 1793 cornerstone event remains a recorded foundational ceremony for the Capitol. The Capitol and its cornerstone ceremony are focal points of early federal masonry and civic ritual.