“Our palace,” he jokes.

The cramped, 225-square-foot space serves as an office for three of the four employees of the House Historian’s office. It is also, arguably, emblematic of an office still finding its way after being relaunched one year ago following a 10-year hiatus.

When then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) became Speaker in 1995, one of his first moves was to fire then-House Historian Raymond Smock, who had served in the position for 12 years, and replace him with a close ally and fellow Georgian, Kennesaw State University professor Christina Jeffrey.

Within days of her appointment, the turbulence continued when Jeffrey was fired after it became public she’d made controversial remarks related to a high school course on the Holocaust.

After Jeffrey’s departure, what was left of the historian’s office was merged into the newly created Legislative Resource Center within the Clerk’s office. In 2000, a historical services staff was created as part of the LRC. Finally, in 2002, an Office of History and Preservation, charged with archival, curatorial and publications duties, was established under the Clerk’s supervision.

But many of those who care about the institution of the House felt the chamber needed more, particularly in outreach and in fielding both internal and outside historical inquiries — a duty for which the Senate Historical Office, which has been in existence since 1975, has been widely praised.

Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), a former high school history teacher, “very much wanted to restore the historian’s office,” says his spokesman Ron Bonjean.

And so, in late April 2005, he did, tapping Robert Remini, a prominent National Book Award-winning historian, expert on Andrew Jackson and emeritus history professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Ironically, Remini says he hadn’t even applied for the job.

After a lengthy search — during which the deadline for applications was extended once — Remini says he was asked by Ted Van Der Meid, a senior aide to Hastert, if he would take the job. At the time, Remini was working on “The House: The History of the House of Representatives,” which was mandated by Congressional legislation and released this month by Smithsonian Books in association with HarperCollins.

“Out of the blue he asked me,” Remini recalls. “My reaction at first was I thought it was a joke. That’s why I said, ‘You can’t afford me.’ I realized as the questioning continued he was serious.”

“It was a natural fit to have him move into the historian’s role,” says Bonjean, pointing to Remini’s authorship of the House history book.

But Beuttler, who at the time was working under Remini as the associate university historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago, had already interviewed for the position and was interested in the job.

“Look ... I can’t take this away from him, and I won’t do it unless he will agree to be my deputy,” Remini recalls informing the Speaker’s office. “So we asked him, and he agreed to do it.” (Beuttler, 44, remains interested in the job. “When he retires, I’ll apply for the position,” he says.)

The appointment of Remini has earned plaudits from House Members, including Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), whom Remini taught in the late 1950s when he was at Fordham University.

“I know some great historians and teachers, but I can’t think of anybody who would do a better job or as good of job as Dr. Robert Remini,” Pascrell says. He “brings a sense ... that the institution and what the institution represents is more important than partisan politics.”

The past controversy over the House Historian’s Office is clearly something the office is aiming to avoid.

“That’s always in the back of your mind,” Beuttler acknowledges. “I don’t think anyone wants to see what happened 10 years ago. I don’t think Republicans and Democrats want to see the office politicized.”

The effort to avoid any element of political favoritism has even trickled down to the office’s hires for support staff. Michael Cronin, the office manager, was an aide to former Rep. Tim Penny (D-Minn.), while Anthony Wallis, the research assistant, worked or interned for a variety of Republican Members, including Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.).

The hirings, Beuttler says, were planned in part to make sure the office was “not drawing from one side or another.”

Office Set-Up
The 84-year-old Remini, whose wife is ill, says he has no plans “to pull up stakes and move here.” Besides, he’s already committed to write the official history of the University of Illinois at Chicago and is under contract with HarperCollins to write a short, narrative history of the United States.

As a result, Remini, unlike his Senate counterpart, Richard Baker, commutes to the Capitol “every couple of weeks.” Otherwise, he fields press calls and researches and writes mostly from his home in Wilmette, Ill. “It’s almost like he’s got a district office in some ways,” says Beuttler, who permanently relocated to D.C. last spring.

For much of the past year, Remini’s primary focus as House Historian has been to complete the recently released narrative history of the House — a task he was already deeply enmeshed in prior to becoming Historian.

Despite his distance, Remini’s three-person staff is expected each Monday to report their activities for the previous week to him, and both Beuttler and Remini say they are in contact “daily.” There’s an understanding that Remini’s role is to be “the big historian, writing” with Beuttler taking care of “a lot of the other stuff,” Beuttler says.

Remini, whose annual salary as of January was $109,646, rejects the suggestion that his absence from the office has had a negative impact on it.

“I’m very available. In a moment’s notice I can get on a plane and within two hours I’m here,” he says.

One ongoing challenge for the historian’s office, however, is to define itself in the shadow of the similarly named but much larger Office of History and Preservation, which was itself seen, when it was established four years ago, as a step toward reinstituting some of the functions of the old House Historian.

Among the 12-person History and Preservation staff’s significant projects is the recent print edition of the “Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress,” which it updated in cooperation with the Senate Historical Office, as well as its ongoing work on a series of books dealing with women and minorities in Congress.

Initially, when the decision was made to recreate the House Historian position, it was actually advertised as part of History and Preservation.

Ultimately, however, the House Historian’s office was reinstituted as a separate office directly under the Speaker, as it had been before Gingrich eliminated the office. The House Historian’s office has an annual budget of $405,000 this year. The budget for the History and Preservation Office, which is funded through the Clerk’s office but not broken out as a separate line item, was not available, officials say.

There do not appear to be any plans to merge the two offices — a fact that Remini clearly isn’t pleased about.

“I felt the office ought to have been incorporated into the Office of the Historian,” he says. “We deal with the same things.”

“Recently someone called that office and then called Beuttler and said, ‘Why haven’t I gotten this material?’ And Beuttler knew nothing about it. That’s the kind of duplication that doesn’t make sense. ... We ought to be integrated with one head.”

Beuttler is more careful when discussing the two offices’ coordination and relationship to date. He says the two offices can roughly be differentiated by his office’s focus on public outreach and interpretation and History and Preservation’s “chronicling and internal” emphasis, such as its archival function. For instance, History and Preservation is responsible for working with House committees to transfer records to the National Archives’ Center for Legislative Archives.

Beuttler says his office is aiming to fill in gaps not already covered by History and Preservation. “They didn’t have a mandate to do oral histories of Members,” he says. “The fact that oral histories of Members haven’t been done is just enormous.”

“I don’t want it to be a turf battle,” he says, noting that he’s already worked closely with History and Preservation on some of the exhibit captioning for the Capitol Visitor Center, among other projects. “With the small staff we’ve got and the small resources, it doesn’t make sense to duplicate what they are doing.”

For her part, Farar Elliott, who since the establishment of History and Preservation in 2002 has served as House curator and was recently promoted to head the office in the wake of former chief Ken Kato’s departure last fall, declined to be interviewed for the story.

However, through House Administration Committee Spokesman Jon Brandt, Elliott, who will continue to also serve as curator, describes her relationship with Beuttler as “cordial [and] collegial” and indicates that the duties of her office had remained the same.

Meanwhile, Smock — the former House Historian who now heads the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies at Shepherd University — expressed skepticism about the workability of having two history offices and a House Historian who doesn’t actually reside in Washington.

“The idea to have a House Historian who lives in Illinois and flies into the Capitol a couple of days a month is just not going to work,” he says. “There’s still some wrinkles the House has to work out if they want this to be a first-class operation.”

Historical Vision
Among the items at the top of Remini’s to-do list is to sit down with Hastert and conduct a thorough interview about his Speakership — a project he admits will likely have to wait until the end of Hastert’s tenure.

In the meantime, he’ll continue to collect information on the House’s history, which could be used in a possible second edition of “The House,” which effectively ends with President Bill Clinton’s House impeachment. When asked, the House Historian’s Office also has stepped in to revise committee histories. For instance, at Chairman Bill Thomas’ (R-Calif.) request, Beuttler is updating the Ways and Means Committee history, which hasn’t been revisited since 1986.

As part of the Historian office’s outreach function, Beuttler is working on a pilot House fellows program, which will allow six Republicans and six Democrats to select one high school teacher from their district for a week-long workshop at the end of July.

The program will focus on “not just what Capitol Hill is about, but also ways they can help students understand what the history of the House is,” says Beuttler, adding that eventually he’d like to see the program expand.

The Historian’s office is also in the process of taking over primary responsibility for “over 100,000” Congressional photographs and negatives dating back to the 1950s that need to be inventoried and archived.

The office has recently been allocated a small storage space on the first floor of Cannon and has received legislative authorization, though not yet an appropriation, to add a photo archivist to its staff. Beuttler’s also working with a designer to launch the first-ever House Historian’s Web site, which he hopes to have up and running by fall.

Looking to the future, Beuttler wants the office to start a project interviewing freshman Members during their first few months in the House to get a sense of their initial expectations and experiences. “This is actually something that the Speaker suggested,” he says.

As cramped as the current quarters are, the office is at least now in its permanent home; it was located in transition space until late September. Still, space remains a barrier.

Remini, whose own private office in the Cannon building is similarly modest, says, “We could use a few additional people, like interns, but we don’t have any room.”