On slow policy days, representatives would often stop by the scrums of pages at the back of the chamber and chat.
He watched the morning sun's first rays hitting the back of the chamber, something enthusiasts say is not a coincidence.
So a month or so ago, workers attached a new top to his desk on the center aisle near the back of the chamber.
Oddly, former Representative David Wu of Oregon, a Democratic who resigned under the cloud of scandal before the August recess, sat with a young girl toward the back of the chamber, as others more or less avoided him.
A pair of standing stones mark the way to the mound, which has been aligned to the east, meaning the sun's rays will hit the back of the chamber at sunrise on the summer solstice.
Mr. Perry's remarks to the senators were interrupted briefly when a member of Mr. Whitmire's staff who had been standing at the back of the chamber collapsed.
And as their names were called repeatedly for their votes, Mr. Labrador looked down at his desk and Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina, stood silently in the back of the chamber, arms crossed, staring at the House well.
When Lash appeared before the House Un-American Actinities Committee in 1939 to testify about Communist influences in student organizations, his irreverent replies earned the sympathies of Eleanor Roosevelt, who sat knitting at the back of the chamber.
(Podesta, who has long advised the White House to use more executive authority, watched the speech with other top Obama aides from the back of the chamber. He seemed pleased).
Mrs. Clinton, who was first elected to the Senate in 2000 along with Mr. Corzine, shared personal anecdotes about huddling with him in the back of the chamber, where they would swap stories and raid a drawer filled with candy.
