Lighting the State House: Charles Kaflinski and the OSC’s Chandelier

In June 1837, the Niles’ Weekly Register reported on a new addition to the Old Senate Chamber. “A splendid chandelier” had been provided by Cornelius & Son of Philadelphia and was described to be “one of the most beautiful things of the kind that we have ever seen.”[1] Only a few months later, however, the chandelier fell down while being lit, breaking several of the branches and the glass shades.[2] Surely, when mass efforts were made under the contractor Lind & Murdoch in 1858-1860 to refit the entire State House with gas light, a chandelier that had required repair after only a few months would not have survived the renovation.

However, research shows that the 1830s chandelier in the Old Senate Chamber survived much longer than originally thought, and even makes an appearance in one of the earliest images of the room, a c.1868 stereoview taken by William M. Chase. But who would have refitted the chandelier?

The OSC chandelier c.1868, refitted for gas lighting by Charles Kaflinski, taken by William M. Chase. Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 5907-1-1.

A Living Shrine, The OSC in the Nineteenth-Century

The life of the Old Senate Chamber did not stop on December 23, 1783 when George Washington resigned his commission. In fact, while seeking to restore the room to how it appeared in the months that Congress was in session at the Maryland State House, researchers have had to look at the entire history of the room - stretching all the way through the nineteenth-century and into the present day. Though the Old Senate Chamber would change dramatically over the years, its status as the room where Washington appeared before Congress was never completely forgotten. Even as early as 1823, Maryland politicians were discussing placing a bronze statue of Washington in the Old Senate Chamber “upon the very spot where he resigned.”[1]

A detail of one of the earliest known stereocards of the Old Senate Chamber, c.1868, before renovations in the 1870s, taken by William M. Chase. Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 5907-1-1.

Before the renovations between 1876-1878 that considerably altered the appearance of the room (known to some historians today as “the desecration”), the Old Senate Chamber had already dramatically changed since 1783. New, fashionable Empire-style desks were added in 1838 to replace the John Shaw desks supplied in the 1790s. Portraits of the four signers decorated the room, and a carpet was added in 1856. In 1858, the fireplace was taken out to make way for Edwin White’s Washington Resigning, the massive size of which inevitably made it a focal point of the room, consistently earning a mention in nearly every account until its move to the grand staircase in 1904.

First Photographic Images of the OSC