A big centennial event slipped past us in Jefferson City last weekend and nobody seemed to notice.
Sunday, October 6, was the 100th anniversary of he dedication of the Capitol.
Local historian Michelle Brooks did a presentation about it last night for the Historic City of Jefferson. I couldn’t go because I was doing a presentation at the library about the 250th anniversary of the First Continental Congress—the one before the Declaration of Independence was written but the one that created a document that created our country.
A whole chapter of the Capitol dedication will be in my next book, a history of the capitol and some of the history of the people who worked in it, for it, against it, and died for it.
The Capitol Commission, which has been doing centennial observances since a 2011 event in the rotunda commemorating the fire that destroyed the 1840 Capitol, has been focused more on restoration and renovations for some time now and is doing persistent and diligent work on bringing the Capitol back to the way the original designers intended for it to look.
A massive exterior effort in recent years has brought Ceres down from the dome for restoration and cleaning (who wouldn’t need it after being hit by lighting about 300 times), the statues and the fountains have been cleaned and repaired. The stonework has been cleaned and tuckpointed.
Inside, the great stained glass window over the grand stairway is back in place and the vaulted ceiling has been restored to its original color. The contractor let me get up on the scaffolding for some personal time with it a few days ago. The cleaning and restoration of he window, which was installed about 1917, has brought out details that had been hidden for years and the restoration of the original wall colors makes the window’s beauty even more striking.
The legislative library will be open soon after cracks in its ceiling have been fixed and the room and its columns have been restored to their original colors.
Eventually, the double-decker offices that now house state representatives and are handicap Inaccessible will be turned into single-story offices again but that is an ongoing struggle linked to other issues—-where to put these people and who has to move to where else when that happens being a question that has been unresolved for a long time.
The goal is to return our capitol to the majesty it was when it was dedicated in 1924. The House of Representatives was restored in 1988 and the Senate in 2001. The trip to visit the window as something of a trifecta for me. I am one of the few people who has touched the ceilings of both legislative chambers, and the window is the icing on the cake. And when Ceres was on display before she was put back on the dome, I got close to her. In fact, her face is on the back of my business cards.
I often have wondered what Egerton Swartwout, the architect of the Capitol, would think of it if he were to walk in to it today and see so many of the things that were put in it in his day are still there. I know he’d be dismayed at some of the abuses the building has undergone—the double-decker offices one of the greatest, and the decades of monochrome off-white paint that has covered the color scheme that he created to highlight the architectural details of the monumental rooms, and so forth.
The dedication was held in 1924 although the building was occupied starting in 1917. A dedication planned for 1918 had to be cancelled because of the war and the building languished undedicated until 1924 when members of the commission that oversaw its construction started a movement to dedicate the building while they were still alive to enjoy it.
It was a huge event with speechifying going on all afternoon and an elaborate 1920s-style pageant (folks, I think it would be considered pretty awful today but back then it was some doin’s) that portrayed various epochs in state history. The last act was halted because of a heavy rain and lightning storm that rendered the unpaved roads of the day quagmires, and the bridge across the river dangerous.
Perhaps it was an appropriate bookend to the story of the present Capitol, which began with a rainstorm and a single lightning bolt that hit the dome of the old Capitol on February 5, 1911 and not only destroyed the building, but it created the last great challenge to Jefferson City as the seat of government.
A peach farmer from West Plains generated the greatest threat. But that’s another story. (Some folks say that Sedalia tried to get the capital designation then but that’s not true. That happened in 1896.)
But that’s another story. And if the book gets published it might make interesting reading. It sure was interesting writing, I can tell you that.
So happy anniversary to our Capitol. And to our Capital City which will celebrate its BIcentennial as the seat of state government in a couple of years. What a great time that will be to commit to being a greater city.