State capitol

“ It is a railroad center with direct connections with the coal and iron resources of the State, and is an extensive lumber depot.
Public Interests.—The city is well laid out, lighted with electricity, and surrounded by magnificent scenery. The State capitol buildings are located in the midst of a beautiful park of 10 acres on a gentle rise of ground. The Capitol is one of the most magnificent buildings in the world. ”

“ It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars [Pg 192] should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skilful architecture which unites national sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? ”

“ The State Capitol is an imposing structure. Under the general code provision passed in 1895, the city government is vested in a mayor, elected biennially, and a unicameral council which confirms the executive's nominations to all subordinate offices except those of police magistrate and city treasurer, which are filled by popular election. ”

“ Nothing would have been more inappropriate and I saw to it that this task was performed by the head of the commonwealth in an address which ran:
The capitol is much more than the building in which the legislature holds its sessions, the courts sit in judgment and the executive exercises his authority. It is a concrete manifestation of the importance and power of the state and an expression of its artistic development. ”

“ It is true that you’d never suspect they have a government; this is the principal seat, but, save for three or four big buildings, most of them affreux, it looks like a settlement of negroes. No movement, no officials, no authority, no embodiment of the State. Enormous streets, comme toujours, lined with little red houses where nothing ever passes but the tramway. The Capitol—a vast structure, false classic, white marble, iron and stucco, which has assez grand air—must be seen to be appreciated. ”

“ Scrub and paint all they may there is not a building in all the West, I believe, that looks as clean and white on the outside as our own State capitol on Bushnell Park. But to return to the capitol at Indianapolis. Black and dirty as it will always look on the outside, on the inside it is to be almost entirely pure white, giving it, in comparison with the capitol at Albany and our own, a much cheaper look. ”

“ This is the more inexcusable, as the climate requires indispensably a free use of vegetable food for health as well as comfort, and is very friendly to the raising of fruits. The only public buildings worthy of mention are the Capitol, the Palace, the College, and the Hospital for Lunatics, all of them in Williamsburg, heretofore the seat of our government. The Capitol is a light and airy structure, with a portico in front of two orders, the lower of which, being Doric, is tolerably just in its proportions and ornaments, save only that the intercolonnations are too large. ”

“ The Capitol was tilled with crowds who favored or opposed the law; nor could the matrons be kept at home either by advice or shame, nor even by the commands of their husbands; but they beset every street and pass in the city, beseeching the men as they went down to the forum, that, in the present flourishing state of the commonwealth, when the private fortune of all was daily increasing, they would suffer the women to have their former ornaments restored. ”

“ He might spend a couple of millions on a building which would astonish the natives, and not give them as agreeable a working room for the Legislature as this old chamber. The fashion is to put up an edifice whose dimensions shall somehow represent the dignity of the State, a vast structure of hall-ways and staircases, with half-lighted and ill-ventilated rooms. It seems to me that the American genius ought to be able to devise a capitol of a different sort, certainly one better adapted to the Southern climate. ”

“ It is fit that it should stand here, one of the chief distinctions of our splendid Capitol, here in the political centre of the State, here in the city where first in all the world was proclaimed and put into a political charter the fundamental idea of democracy, that "government rests upon the consent of the people," here in the city where by the action of these self existing towns was formed the model, the town and the commonwealth, the bi-cameral legislature, of our constitutional federal union. ”

“ The beautiful “western staircase” of red sandstone (from plans by Perry) and the senate chamber (designed by Richardson) are perhaps the most notable parts of the structure. The building houses the various executive departments, the legislature and the court of appeals. A large and handsome building of white granite was begun in 1908 directly opposite the Capitol to accommodate the department of education and the magnificent state library (about 450,000 volumes) . Other important buildings are the old state hall, a handsome white marble building erected in 1842 ”

“ Streets of substantial dwellings, and numerous most elegant private residences, with large and handsomely ornamented grounds, are discovered as one passes through the city. A striking edifice, of Cincinnati freestone, four stories high, is occupied as a Post Office and Court House. Its High School building is one of the finest in the country. When the State Government was, in 1866, removed from Omaha to Lincoln, the Legislature donated the Square and Capitol Building at the former place for High School purposes. ”

“ As in most southern inland towns, its one great artery, Main street, runs from the river bluffs to the Capitol, perched on a high hill a full mile away. This street, wide and sandy, was in the cradle days badly paved, but rather closely built up. Nor was the Capitol a peculiarly stately pile, either in size or architectural effect. Still it dominated the lesser structures, as it stared down the street with quite a Roman rigor. The staff upon its dome bore the flag of the new nation, run up there shortly after the Congress met by the hands of a noted daughter of Virginia. ”

“ This District, which has neither voice nor vote in your deliberations, looks to you for protection and aid, and I commend all its wants to your favorable consideration, with a full confidence that you will meet them not only with justice, but with liberality. It should be borne in mind that in this city, laid out by Washington and consecrated by his name, is located the Capitol of our nation, the emblem of our Union and the symbol of our greatness. Here also are situated all the public buildings necessary for the use of the Government, and all these are exempt from taxation. ”

“ Standing on the rising ground among the rich foliage it has an aspect of quiet strength, an impressive assurance of dignity and permanence peculiar to itself among massive buildings in the great cities. Everyone goes, or should go, to see Congress at work, and to explore the corridors trod by generations of the nation’s legislators, soldiers, jurists, orators, in short, by all the great makers of the nation since Washington laid its foundation stone. A singular instance of fate thwarting intention is found in the situation of the Capitol. ”

“ You stand at the back of the capitol to treat yourself to a view, and it is a very noble one. You understand, the capitol stands upon the verge of a high piece of table land, a fine commanding position, and its front looks out over this noble situation for a city—but it don't see it, for the reason that when the capitol extension was decided upon, the property owners at once advanced their prices to such inhuman figures that the people went down and built the city in the muddy low marsh behind the temple of liberty ”

“ The same transformation is going on in the Capitol grounds. Blocks of old houses have been torn down and demolished, to make room for a park fit to encircle the Capitol, which can never be 75complete till it takes in all the rolling slopes which lie between it and the Potomac. No scaffolding and pulleys now deface the snowy surfaces of the Capitol. Unimpeded the dome soars into mid-air, till the goddess of liberty on its top seems caught into the embrace of the clouds. ”

“ The Capitol was commenced In 1793, but was not yet completed on the original plan, when, in 1814, (a) the British troops, under General Ross, burned it, a August 24 together with the library of Congress, the president's house, and all the public buildings except the Patent Office. The city then contained about nine hundred houses, scattered in groups over an area of three miles. The walls of the Capitol remained firm, though scarred and blackened. The present noble edifice was completed in 1827, ** more than a quarter of a century after the seat of government was located at Washington. ”

“ From the very beginning the Capitol has suffered as a National Building from the conflicting and foreign tastes of its decorators. Literally begun in the woods by a nation in its infancy, it not only borrowed its face from the buildings of antiquity, but it was built by men, strangers in thought and spirit to the genius of a new Republic, and the unwrought and unimbodied poetry of its virgin soil. ”

“ The crowning glory of Washington is the Capitol, its towering dome, surmounted by the colossal statue of America, being the prominent landmark, seen from afar, on every approach to the city. The total height to the top of the statue is three hundred and seventy-five feet above the Potomac River level. The grand position, vast architectural mass and impressive effect of the Capitol from almost every point of view have secured for it the praise of the best artistic judges of all countries as the most imposing modern edifice in the world. ”

“ Leaving the navy yard, you stroll to other parts of Capitol Hill, and soon become aware why the noble Capitol was planted on the heights, and why the adjacent grounds towards the east were chosen as the homes of the early aristocracy. Here Nature has lavished her most precious gifts. Our magnificent Capitol is the public [334] building which dwarfs all others by comparison. Its superb front faces the homes on the hill. Its rear, from polite necessity, must be forever turned towards that western end, where speculation runs riot, and fortunes have been made in a single night. ”

“ That Capitol, I confess, was to me a sort of granite temple erected by the Commonwealth of Colorado to law, to justice, to the ideals of self-government that have made our republic the promised land of all the oppressed of Europe; and I could conceive of no nobler work than to serve those ideals in the assembly halls of that building, with those eternal mountains on the horizon and that sun of freedom overhead. Surely a man may confess so much, without shame, of his youth and his inexperience.... It is not merely the gold on the dome of the Capitol that has given it another look to me now. ”

“ The city stands on a series of low-lying softly undulating hills; the Capitol, a building of pure classical architecture, stands in the centre of the city silhouetted against the bright blue sky, and is a landmark for miles round. ”

“ There is always a ruinous look about an unfinished building when it is occupied and devoted to business. The Capitol is situated on a hill, one face of which is scarped by the road, and has the appearance of being formed of heaps of rubbish. Towards Pennsylvania Avenue the long frontage abuts on a lawn shaded by trees, through which walks and avenues lead to the many entrances under the porticoes and colonnades ”

“ The public buildings of Washington do not attempt architectural display: with scarcely an exception, they are severely simple and square. But there is a certain grandeur in the masses of white marble, which is everywhere lavishly employed, and the Capitol stands right well—alone, on the crest of a low, abrupt slope, with nothing to intercept the view from its terraces, seaward, and up the valley of the Potomac. ”

“ Inside the Capitol too there is much to detain you: the vast fireproof library of Congress; the legislative halls; the marble room, wainscoted in mirrors, where you can see the Senators slide between the pillars accompanied by the multiplying train of not one but a hundred shadows, and where you can wonder to your heart's content what a room lined with looking-glass has to do with legislation ”

“ The history of the times leaves no doubt of the solicitude of President Washington and of the commissioners, whose hopes were enlisted in the permanent establishment of the capital, to avail of every resource to obtain the means wherewith to erect the public buildings, so that the capitol might be ready for occupancy at the time designated in the act of congress. ”

“ I walked down by the back streets to the steps mounting to the Capitol--that long inclined plane, rather, broken at every two paces, which is the unfailing disappointment, I believe, of tourists primed for retrospective raptures. Certainly the Capitol seen from this side isn't commanding. The hill is so low, the ascent so narrow, Michael Angelo's architecture in the quadrangle at the top so meagre, the whole place somehow so much more of a mole-hill than a mountain, that for the first ten minutes of your standing there Roman history seems suddenly to have sunk through a trap-door. ”

“ The exclusive aristocracy of Washington is found in that part of the city known as Capitol Hill. Upon the emerald heights crowned with gardens and flowers, the proud old families of ancient lineage occupy their ancestral acres almost under the dome of our beloved Capitol. ”