- It's a masterpiece of design and engineering.
- They wanted it to be a symbol of self-rule.
- A very high-minded,
idealized notion of democracy.
- Designed by an American master.
- This was the crowning gem in his life's work.
- And filled with priceless artwork.
- It's Wisconsin's most valuable work of art.
There's nothing like it.
- It's a state capitol that was created for all of us.
- I always think of it
as the most public building in Wisconsin.
- It's always open 365 days out of the year.
- After a catastrophe ruined its predecessor.
- An hour after the fire starts,
it's lighting up the sky.
- The Capitol would face its own disaster.
- There were actually parts of the mosaics
that leaned forward.
- The whole thing was at risk of crumbling down.
- And it would take a massive 12-year effort
to save the building.
- The restoration of this building was important
because this is a masterpiece.
- This National Historic Landmark
is one of the most admired capitols in the country.
I'm going to discover its remarkable history,
explore its grand spaces,
and uncover a few of its hidden secrets.
- This is the story of
Our House: The Wisconsin Capitol
- Our House: The Wisconsin Capitol
is funded in part by
Ron and Colleen Weyers,
Francis A. and Georgia F. Ariens Fund
within the Brillion Area Family of Funds,
the Conney Family,
in loving memory of Mildred Conney,
Edvest College Savings Plan,
helping families save since 1997,
the Eleanor and Thomas Wildrick Family,
Roger and Lynn Van Vreede,
American Transmission Company,
National Guardian Life Insurance Company,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
*
- The Wisconsin State Capitol
was conceived just after the turn of the century
in an era of American optimism.
States were building ever more grand capitols
to express their success, pride, and democratic ideals.
If Europe's palaces were made for monarchs,
America was building them for its people.
When it came time for Wisconsin to build such a palace,
it would be one for the ages.
Since its completion in 1917,
the Wisconsin Capitol has contained
the state's four branches of government.
Its symmetrical form creates a unique balance
between the spaces of the Governor,
Senate,
Assembly,
and Supreme Court.
- Everything is equal in that building.
Every aspect of government is weighted equally.
No one wing is more important than the other wing.
- This uniformity is made possible
because the Capitol is arranged
in a shape known as a St. Andrew's Cross.
- St. Andrew's Cross is essentially an X.
Here at our capitol,
it lines up with the points of the compass
and also the streets
that are coming towards the Capitol.
- It's the only capitol in the country laid out this way
*
making it notoriously bewildering to navigate.
[mischievous music]
- It's a mirror this way at 90 degrees
and it's a mirror at 180.
So, it's inherently confusing
and you can get entirely turned around
and end up in a different place in the city than you intended.
[laughing]
- You can get very easily turned around.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
- The Capitol's layout also creates many access points.
And all of these entrances feed into a central circular area
called the Rotunda.
- This is the Capitol's premier public space.
The Rotunda is immense in scale.
Natural light pours in from skylights in the wings and the
dome's 19-foot tall cathedral windows.
The space is intended
to draw our eyes upward.
Fitting for a building designed to inspire us.
- The Rotunda is a big part of why the Capitol attracts
hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
- We call our Rotunda the "living room" for a reason.
That's because it's always open
365 days out of the year.
People can come in and get married here,
we have blood drives here, we have school groups here.
It is one of the most public features
of the state of Wisconsin.
- The Capitol is and always was
meant to be a public building.
From the time it was built,
it was referred to casually as,
quote, "the people's house,"
which was a phrase
that originated a hundred years earlier
with the White House in the early 19th century.
It fit the idea of how the building should be used.
Even if you look at it architecturally,
there are doors everywhere.
It's meant to be an open public building.
- It brings people in.
It invites people in.
Accessibility is kind of its theme.
The capitol was basically designed and placed
within the cityscape
to express the notion of accessibility.
- Many of our rooms can be reserved
by people who get permits.
Weddings can happen here.
Retirement parties happen here.
I've myself signed as a witness
for at least two different marriage certificates,
just from working here for two years.
Even if the legislators are meeting,
even if the governor is signing a bill,
it's still open to everyone.
[traffic sounds]
- The people's house seems perfectly placed
in the heart of Madison.
But the Capitol and the city would not exist
except for one man.
Frontier judge and land speculator James Duane Doty
traveled to this area in the spring of 1836.
To him, it was wild and unsettled.
But he envisioned a city here
and drafted a plat, or map, of its layout.
Wisconsin became a U.S. territory that summer,
and a convention was called
to form a constitution.
One important order of business
was choosing a capital city
among the twenty sites proposed.
Doty, one of the delegates, had a plan.
- Doty presented his map to fellow delegates,
promising them lots in exchange for votes.
When it came time to vote for a site to be the capital,
16 of the 39 men owned property in Madison,
a city that didn't even exist.
- And that was enough to tip the scales
and Madison was chosen.
Now whether that should be called bribery
or just good politicking is for the beholder to decide.
- Madison's first capitol building was constructed
on the square Doty had earmarked.
By the time Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848,
this cold and leaky capitol
had earned the uncomplimentary nickname
"Doty's washbowl".
Its replacement was completed in 1869.
Over the next four decades,
the second state capitol
would receive numerous expansions and updates,
especially to its fire prevention technology.
- By the turn of the century,
the second Madison capitol
was considered to be
a state of the art fireproof building.
- But in the early morning of February 27, 1904,
a newly-varnished ceiling caught fire
and the system catastrophically failed.
- An hour after the fire starts,
it's lighting up the sky in Madison
and people are streaming out of their houses
to come try to help.
- By the time the fire was out,
the Wisconsin Capitol was in ruins.
No had died,
but it was a devastating loss for the state.
Governor Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette
would cheerlessly write to a friend,
"I have no doubt the citizens of Wisconsin
will insist on having an entirely new building
put up in its stead.
Nevertheless, I shall regret to see it go."
- At this point in the early 20th century,
Wisconsin had a high self-esteem and booming economy.
- It's right at the height of the Gilded Age.
Wisconsin has become a tremendous success,
and they wanted this capitol to be a symbol of that success.
- And other states, like Minnesota,
were building grandiose new capitols.
- Wisconsin was not going to be left behind
in the design of the building
that it was going to have to mark its place
as one of the premier state capitols in the country.
- The stage was set for Wisconsin
to make its own statement.
A committee appointed by Governor La Follette,
called the Capitol Commission,
would oversee this ambitious endeavor.
- The Capitol Commission requested proposals
from architectural firms all across the country.
They wanted a grand and monumental building.
And they would find the perfect architect
to achieve that vision in George Post.
- By the turn of the century, George Browne Post of New York
was a leading figure in American architecture.
- He was known in Manhattan
for designing and having built really tall office buildings
using structural steel.
So, he was considered very much an innovator in that regard
and sometimes referred to
as the father of the later skyscraper.
- Post had recently completed the New York Stock Exchange
and, in his late sixties,
was actively seeking a large public project
to seal his legacy.
- He always wanted to build a capitol, and this was it.
This was the crowning gem in his life's work.
- But building it would be a challenge.
The Capitol's huge cost of over $7 million,
would have to be spread out
over a decade.
And there was another significant obstacle.
- They didn't start with a blank slate
like many capitols do.
They were constructing this capitol
while they were taking down
the old capitol that had burned.
- To spread out costs,
and also keep government running
in the old capitol's salvaged wings,
the construction project
would proceed in five stages over 11 years.
It got underway in 1906.
And overseeing this massive endeavor
was Madison architect Lew Porter.
His assignment was as monumental
as the building itself.
- If you've ever remodeled your house and put in a bathroom
or built a house from scratch
you know what goes into starting with paper plans
and watching a 3-dimensional building rise from them.
Multiply that a thousand-fold
and you have Lew Porter's job.
125 separate jobs had been identified--
plumbing, electricity,
painting, whatever.
And on any given day,
30 to 40 of those contractors
were at work on the site.
- With Post usually in New York,
making sure every detail was done exactly as specified
fell to Porter.
- He insisted that
artisans, craftsmen, plumbers, joiners, carpenters
all live up to the very exacting standard
Post had pretty much demanded for the building.
- One day he noticed that
a railing in one of the stairways of the Capitol
as it was being built seemed a little odd.
And he looked at the specs,
it called for the railing to be solid brass.
He got out a hacksaw and he tore into it
and in fact it was only brass plated.
And, of course, he had it dismantled
and sent back to the vendor
and it was replaced with a solid brass one.
- Post carefully selected materials
that would maximize beauty
and visual appeal.
Marble, granite, and limestone,
quarried from dozens of sites around the world,
were used to create
a spectacular display of color and patterns.
And each major chamber
was distinguished by marble and granite
found nowhere else in the Capitol,
to ensure each of these spaces
would have a character all its own.
- For the exterior, Post wanted marble,
but the cost was simply too high.
So, Post, Lew Porter, and the Capitol Commission
toured a number of quarries out east.
They chose a stone quarried in Vermont
called White Bethel granite.
- This granite covers
the entire exterior of the building.
Even the four statuary groups at the base of the dome
are sculpted from it.
As sections of the Capitol were built,
they were put to use.
When the west wing was finished in 1909,
the legislature began meeting there.
In 1915, two years before the Capitol was completed,
guides began giving tours to the public.
It's a tradition that has continued
for over a century.
- You know what?
That would be a really good question
to ask our tour guide later,
is, "How much stone it was?"
- Wow!
- How did it get up there?
- Big ladders.
- Welcome to the Wisconsin State Capitol.
My name is Jason,
and we're going to take the stairs.
You can follow me up this way.
The title of that painting is
"The Resources of Wisconsin."
In the center, there is a lady with red hair.
What's her name?
- Wisconsin. - Wisconsin!
She represents our state.
- Well, I really like sharing the stories.
So, I used to do theater back in high school,
and I also am a historian by trade.
Being able to share the history
and being able to share that information with people
in a story format is my favorite thing.
- If they try to speak over their thirty minutes,
the justices will interrupt and say, "Excuse me!
[banging table to imitate a gavel]
Your time is over. Please sit down!"
Thirty minutes to change the laws of the state.
- Each year, 50,000 students from schools around the state
make a field trip to the Capitol.
- This is my students' favorite thing to do each year.
I think that the information that's given on the tours here
is excellent.
- The first electronic voting system installed in this room
was the original electronic voting system in the world.
It was here in Wisconsin before anywhere else.
- A Capitol tour is packed
with state history and interesting facts,
but it's often the little details
that are most memorable.
- We have a fossilized starfish in the staircase.
No matter how many tours I give,
that's always the most memorable piece
that people come back for.
But besides the fossil,
I would say also the ghost in the Assembly.
- Now when this painting was finished by Mr. Edwin Blashfield
we said it's very beautiful, we really like it,
but it's just not Wisconsin enough.
So, we made him go back and add one animal
to make it more Wisconsin.
What animal did he add?
- Badger. - The badger.
So over here on the right side
he added this badger to the rock.
But, of course,
when you add something to a painting
you have to paint over top of something else.
And what he removed was a fourth Civil War soldier.
That soldier did not like the decision
and so he came back as a ghost to haunt us.
Do you wanna see the ghost? - Yeah!
- Hat, ear, and shoulder.
And that's the ghost of the Assembly.
But he's a friendly ghost.
- This should be a priority for all kids to visit,
to see how our state government runs
and how we should be so proud of this capitol
that was built for us.
- For citizens young and old, the Wisconsin Capitol
was designed to instill a sense of awe and importance.
Public buildings constructed at this time in America
followed grandiose classical examples
from Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance.
- Why did this lavish classical style
become the norm for government buildings?
A clue can be found here
at the western approach to the Capitol.
It's a statue called "Forward," and it's from
the Columbian Exposition in 1893.
Now, that might seem
unrelated to our Capitol.
But actually, it has everything to do with it.
- The Chicago World's Fair of 1893,
also known as the Columbian Exposition,
featured a temporary metropolis
conceived by America's top artists and architects,
including George Post.
- You have a gathering of major architects
who are coming together
to create what was known as the White City,
the classical core
of the Columbian Exposition.
So, they're using architecture based on classical elements.
The columns and the pediments,
and the classical orders,
and the types of decorations,
all of those elements
that you see in a classical building.
- The Chicago World's Fair
would transform this approach to designing public buildings
into a national movement.
- It's almost as if there is a standard vocabulary
that has been set for these architects
of things that people are expecting to see
in a state capitol.
- George Post would bring
the Columbian Exposition's architectural sensibilities
to Madison.
He would also bring its artists.
- The creators of the Capitol
wanted it to serve,
in part, as an art museum.
A place where people could come see
beautiful art and architecture
and be uplifted by it.
- For the Capitol's most prominent work,
Post turned to renowned American sculptor
Daniel Chester French.
- Most people know him for
the sculpture of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.
He was a major, major figure in the art world at the period.
- French's sculpture "Wisconsin"
symbolizes the state motto "Forward,"
a name she is often mistakenly called.
Wisconsin stands over 15 feet tall
and weighs more than three tons.
In 1914,
she was hoisted on top of the Capitol dome,
which was a public spectacle.
- Wisconsin was placed
with such fanfare,
I mean there literally was a parade.
There were speeches and celebration
and it was quite a big deal.
*
- One of the most remarkable works of art in the Capitol
is here in the highest visible point
called the oculus.
It was painted by
one of America's most highly-regarded muralists,
Edwin Blashfield.
And it's a powerful demonstration
of his mastery of scale.
- I think that one was difficult
because you had to understand
that it was going to be 200 feet away from you
when everybody reads it.
- The mural is called "The Resources of Wisconsin."
Blashfield created it in New York City
in a studio big enough to hold the painting.
It was done on five sections of overlapping canvas
because the painting would be glued to onto a concave bowl
to give it an illusion of depth.
The canvases were attached to this surface like wallpaper
and pieced together like a puzzle.
The state of Wisconsin is represented as a woman,
a motif repeated throughout the building.
Blashfield's mural reflects
a major theme in the Capitol's art--
the rich bounty of the state.
Like the artwork of a Roman basilica
or European cathedral,
the art at the Capitol has a story to tell
about the people who made the building
and what they thought about their state
and its government.
- The artists were attempting to convey,
on Post's direction, clearly,
and probably that of the Capitol Commission as well,
a very high-minded, idealized notion of democracy.
- The themes of the artwork
are sort of the grand themes
of liberty,
justice,
government, democracy,
abundance.
- Most of the Capitol's works of art were made by men.
But there are three striking exceptions.
- This statue, called "The West,"
has been here since the Capitol's beginning.
It was sculpted by an artistic prodigy from Madison
named Vinnie Ream Hoxie.
She created it at a time when her fame was at its peak.
- At age 17, Vinnie Ream Hoxie
became the first and only sculptor
for whom Abraham Lincoln ever posed.
When she received a Congressional art commission
the following year,
Ream Hoxie was the first woman and youngest person ever
to win such an award.
In a similar entryway nearby
stands "The Genius of Wisconsin."
Oshkosh native Helen Farnsworth Mears
designed it when she was a 21-year-old artist-in-residence
at the Columbian Exposition.
"Forward" was also sculpted for the Columbian Exposition
by Jean Pond Miner from Menasha.
Miner symbolized the state
with a female figure on the prow of a ship
clasping the American flag to her hip.
The combination of world-class art,
monumental classical architecture,
and exquisite materials
came together perfectly in the Wisconsin Capitol.
By its official completion in 1917,
the state had a building
that reflected its confidence and optimism.
But this Capitol never had a grand opening.
- It took eleven years to build the building
and really no expense was spared
so you'd think that when the work finished
in the summer of 1917
there'd of been a grand celebration.
But nothing of the sort happened.
And the reason for that
was that in April of 1917,
the U.S. entered World War I
and no one thought that this was the time
for a big party
about how much money we'd just spent on a capitol.
- In the years to come, as occupants came and went
and the needs of the building changed,
the Capitol fell into decline.
- Respect for the building and its inherent grandiose-ness
just sort of diminished
as people became used to working in the space.
- There was carpeting over marble floors.
There were eight coats of paint on some of the walls.
There was a time when everything was lemon yellow
or sun yellow,
or everything was lime green.
- Between 1920 and 1980,
the Capitol as it had been envisioned
was nearly destroyed.
In 1965, matters came to a head
when First Lady Dorothy Knowles,
who was a professional interior decorator,
suggested that the Governor's conference room
ought to be painted white in order to brighten it up.
And that made the legislature think, "Well,
who has the right to do things like this to our Capitol?"
- By the 1980s,
systems like electrical, air handling,
and communication
were in serious need of update.
In 1987, it was determined
that a wholesale restoration of the building was needed
and a commission was formed.
The state would commit over a hundred million dollars
to the eleven-year project.
And it would begin in the basement.
- My shop, the electrical shop is in the south basement.
- And did that change a lot with the restoration?
The whole basement area?
- Yes.
The basement areas when I started
were like your classic cobweb kind of basement.
- When I started there, you'd bump your head a lot.
Clearance was probably about four and a half to five feet.
- The basement was given two additional feet of headroom,
systems upgrades,
and new office space.
The project would proceed
section by section
throughout the entire building.
- This is tube lights
that are above the Supreme Court chambers.
The light is picked up the entire length of the tube.
They also put, like,
a dropped ceiling diffuser plastic pieces
so that the light in the chamber
is nice and even.
When I started,
there were fluorescent strip lights, like shop lights,
about three feet off of this glass.
And so, for us to change it,
we had to put boards down
across the top of the stained glass
and just hope you didn't put your foot through
the historic antique glass.
- At times, the restoration team had to play detective,
scouring through old photographs
to uncover the building's original decorative finishes
that had been painted over.
- We did a lot of research.
Postcards, pictures of the eras.
You know, pictures of the governors
to see what was on the wall behind them.
- And paint was removed a layer at a time
to uncover detailed stencil work,
like in the public gallery of the Senate chamber.
- These walls were painted.
- Just a solid color?
- They were painted a solid color when we came in.
Some areas of the building,
the layers of paint were eight and nine layers thick.
I believe there were about four layers of paint
in this particular area.
And we went through layer by layer.
We found that gold leaf was on there.
We could actually see the gold,
but it was in very poor shape.
- Now you have detailed architectural drawings,
but when it comes to decoration
you don't have those kinds of sources?
- No. That kind of document we don't have.
- Sounds like the only way to rediscover it was to do
what you did, go through layer by layer.
- Go through layer by layer.
- Surfaces like this one
were meticulously brought back
to their original colors and pattern.
Beautiful stencil work
was also applied to other surfaces
throughout the Capitol.
Artwork was also carefully restored.
But in the Rotunda,
just getting to it posed a challenge.
A massive 200-foot-tall scaffold was built
to give the restoration team a rare close-up
of the building's most precious art.
And in the case of its four mosaics,
what they discovered was alarming.
- The whole thing was at risk of crumbling down.
- The mosaics were designed
by another Columbian Exposition artist,
Kenyon Cox.
They each consist of
about a hundred thousand pieces of glass
glued onto a canvas,
which was then attached to the walls of the Rotunda.
But over the decades, a problem developed.
- The canvas on which
the glass was adhered
was beginning to delaminate from the wall.
- There were actually parts of the mosaics
that leaned forward,
because they are not only concave,
but they lean towards the Rotunda.
- The restoration team looked to experts around the world
for help with this unique problem.
In the end, the solution was a permanent one--
using a powerful glue.
- We were able to inject at the seam lines
an adhesive material,
push it back,
hold it in place until the adhesive took hold.
And then all was left was cleaning.
- The state's commitment to the Capitol
resulted in a 21st century office building
that shined as brightly as it had in 1917.
Architect George Post did not live
to see the building's completion.
He died four years earlier, in 1913,
at age 75.
But he didn't have to see the final result
to know what he had created.
- So, this is the sketch that Post drew.
This was done years before
the different sections of the construction project happened.
It's just unbelievable how he could visualize all this
and sketch it out,
and come so close to what was the actual finished product.
- Yes, the conception is--
what we see is very nearly what we get.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- But one thing Post never specified before he died
was which side should be considered the Capitol's front.
The building's perfectly uniform shape
doesn't yield an obvious answer.
And when it came time to place Wisconsin on top of the dome,
building supervisor Lew Porter
wondered which direction she should face.
So, he wrote Post's son, James Otis.
- James Otis Post indicated that,
he wrote rather personally,
father always felt
the building should face Lake Monona.
So, Wisconsin was situated to point in that direction.
And the Blashfield mural as well,
the base of it goes in that direction.
So, that also informs,
"What is the orientation of the building?"
which is really lost
pretty much to everybody
unless you know the story.
- ...to hear some great music.
But also to commemorate the 100th anniversary
of this beautiful capitol building
that we are all looking upon right now.
- On a warm July evening in 2017,
the community gathered on the grounds of the Capitol
to hear the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.
It's part of a weekly summer concert series,
but this night was special.
It was a celebration of the building's 100th anniversary.
Some of the restoration team were on hand.
- This is kind of a reunion at this location
of the crew that did the work.
You know, the two thousand of us or so
that contributed to the effort.
- We did an incredibly thorough, authentic,
well-documented process of restoration.
If you're a citizen of Wisconsin
I think you should just be impressed
of how wonderful it looks.
- The restoration of this building was important
because this is a masterpiece.
It was a complete masterpiece
designed by a master of the style.
- This is one of a kind and there's no reason
it can't last for another hundred years
if given proper care.
So, yeah, love it.
Love it to death. [laughs]
- This is the seat of our government.
The symbol of our state.
It tells our story.
And we come to this place for many reasons--
as a community,
as visitors,
as citizens.
But even through our most passionate disagreements,
we share this great capitol.
This is our legacy.
This is our house.
- It has a vitality that few buildings really do.
The building asks us as citizens of the state
to be our best and to make a solid contribution
to our state, however we best can.
- There is no other place like it.
It's just that special feeling you get when you're in it.
- This is a building for the ages
that has come to us from people
who thought highly of the state
and its government
and its institutions
and wanted to create
this monument to the state of Wisconsin.
And those ideals are still relevant today.
*
- Our House: The Wisconsin Capitol
is funded in part by
Ron and Colleen Weyers,
Francis A. and Georgia F. Ariens Fund
within the Brillion Area Family of Funds,
the Conney Family,
in loving memory of Mildred Conney,
Edvest College Savings Plan,
helping families save since 1997,
the Eleanor and Thomas Wildrick Family,
Roger and Lynn Van Vreede,
American Transmission Company,
National Guardian Life Insurance Company,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.