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Early as 1827, males were hired to serve as messengers in Congress.  In the Congressional Record (formerly known as the Congressional Globe),  the term Page was first used in 1839 and referred to as a youth employed as a personal attendant to a person of high rank.

Over the years, the Page Program has seen many changes. In 1965, the late Senator Jacob K. Javits (R-NY) appointed the first black male page and in 1970, the first female page.

The House of Representatives Page Board was established in 1982 and  the first Members of the House Page Board were appointed in November of the same  year the Page Board was established. The Board consists of two Members from the Majority party selected by the Speaker, one Member from the Minority party selected by the Minority Leader, the Clerk of the House and the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House.

1983 was a year of change and after much scandal, the Page Residence Hall was established and Congress required that all pages be at least sixteen years old and juniors in high school. Previous to that, the age range of Pages was 14 to 18 and no type of housing was provided.

When Harry Friedman was a page back in 1978, things were a lot different than they are today. Harry had this to say about what Paging was like back in the 70’s:

I’d be a little enbarrassed to think that some of the things we did 20+ years ago would have any relevance to today’s pages. It was a different world then,

• No chaperones of any kind. Pages were infamous around The Hill for getting into bars and getting into trouble.

• Female pages couldn’t work past 6:00 PM. No one wanted them walking home in the dark.

• Summer pages had to find and pay for their own housing. I lived on 2nd St., NE and most of the female pages were at the YMCA.

• “Fountain Hopping” was the favorite past time. As a group (10-15 pages at a time) we would walk around at night and began to loiter around one of the hundreds of fountains in DC, and then at the right moment, we would jump in and swim. We would then, dripping wet, walk to another fountain and start over. The only the place off limits was the Potomac basin (no one wanted to get shot). The favorite was at the Rayburn Building and the hardest was at the Supreme Court Building (I was one of the few to “jump” there and not get caught).