In 1917, Monorails Were Already Moving Washington

When we think of monorails, we tend to think of the future.

But in 1917, while a section of steel rail was being rolled in Tennessee—the rail that would eventually become part of our Monorail Desk—members of the United States Senate were already riding a monorail beneath the U.S. Capitol.

Yes, really.

The Monorail Beneath the Capitol

Before Washington had today’s underground Capitol subway system, senators needed a faster way to travel between their offices and the Capitol.

In 1912, an electric monorail began carrying them through the tunnel connecting the Russell Senate Office Building and the Capitol.

The suspended car traveled along an overhead rail and could carry up to 18 people at speeds reaching eight miles per hour. It was hardly high-speed transportation, but more than a century ago, it represented a remarkably modern solution to a very practical problem.

And the system lasted.

The Senate monorail remained part of Capitol transportation until 1960.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee…

Five years after that Washington monorail began running, another piece of American industrial history was being made.

In 1917, steel rail was rolled in Tennessee.

More than a century later, that same rail became the structural centerpiece of the Rail Yard Studios Monorail Desk.

The desk takes its name from the simplicity of the idea: one span of rail carrying the design.

Above it sits an 84-by-36-inch expanse of reclaimed oak boxcar flooring, still showing the original bolt pockets and imperfect hand-drilled holes from its first life. Authentic railroad crosstie timbers form the legs, while dimmable lighting illuminates the century-old steel below.

We softened the scars.

We didn’t erase them.

One Rail. Two Centuries of Innovation.

The Tennessee steel in this desk never carried senators beneath Washington. That’s not its story.

But it was born during the same extraordinary period when engineers were reconsidering what a railroad could be—and when a monorail underneath the U.S. Capitol was part of everyday American transportation.

Today, that 1917 rail isn’t carrying a train.

It’s carrying another century of ideas.

Discover the Monorail Desk No. 35 at Rail Yard Studios.