An Extraordinary Work Transcript 

- Narrator: The Wisconsin State Capitol is a monument to the ideal of government-- people working together. When it came time, in the latter part of the 1990s to restore the inside of the Capitol dome the same ideal held true. A diverse group of people needed to work together.

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In 1997, after years of planning, restoration of the Capitol rotunda began.

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And the people assembled to take on this formidable challenge were inspired by each other to do extraordinary work on an extraordinary work of art, the most beautiful part of one of the most impressive Capitol buildings in the nation. The Wisconsin State Capitol is the vision of architect George B. Post. 

- Ron Koenig: In his letters, he says things like: 
"We want to make sure that we don't have the kind of brilliant, outrageous State Capitols that those other states have. 
"What we want is something that, while it is awe-striking when a person walks inside, they're immediately taken up into it."
"We want it to be restrained. We want it to have a feeling of awe that comes from a quieter sense."

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- Narrator: The Capitol was built in five phases, starting in 1906. Construction of the dome and rotunda began in 1911. 

- Chuck Johnson: The quality and the construction and the makeup of this building just are amazing. It never ceases to amaze you of the workmanship and craftsmanship and it's one of three buildings in the world that have a granite dome. The other two are churches in Italy. 

This is really a steel building, clad with the granite and then the stone on the inside. All the steel has been encapsulated with masonry so that it's fireproof, because they didn't want to have another condition, like they did in 1904 where the building burned down.

- Narrator: The dome and rotunda were completed in 1915, the crowning touch to a remarkable building. Every child in the state comes here in fifth grade as part of their Wisconsin history. They lay down on the rotunda floor and look up at the mural. It's the state's living room. 

- Charlie Quagliana: Our task as we're doing a comprehensive project for the Capitol, is to restore the rotunda back to the way 
it was when it was finished in 1915. And we knew it would involve every surface in the rotunda. So, in order to do that we had to have the scaffold. That was probably the major element in our design and planning effort was to get this scaffold right because it would give us access to all the surfaces.

- Narrator: This 130-ton scaffold arrived at the Capitol in 12 semi-trucks in October 1997. As it was assembled in the rotunda a diverse group of experts carefully examined each level determining what tasks lay ahead. ♪ Once they reached the top, 194 feet above the floor restoration began. And level-by-level, they worked their way back down. For most people involved, it was the job of a lifetime. Many were from Wisconsin and felt it was a privilege to work on their state's Capitol. 

- Carol Mcchesney: I've been looking at these spaces and looking at the colors and looking at the marble and looking at the light and how the light comes in the windows for 30 years and to finally being able to be working in this space, to envision what post dreamed 
and to know how he came up with his thoughts and why use the materials that he did and to respect that, I think it's my obligation, if I've appreciated it for 30 years, that I let somebody else appreciate it for another 30 years.

- Narrator: Others on the team had worked on many State Capitols and government buildings all over the nation but were still impressed. 

- Rebecca Garland: We think this is one of the most beautiful buildings in the country. It truly is amazing. The work, the original work, 
decorative work that was done here is outstanding.

- Narrator: The unique aspects of the Capitol rotunda required a unique working relationship. I think the key thing in a project like this one in particular the rotunda project is just to get everybody to work together, to get them to work as a team, but you have the contractors, you have the architects, you have other consultants, some of whom aren't from Wisconsin. You have the owner and all the users. Somehow, you have to get them all to come on the same page, the same schedule and all work together. You don't really know what you're getting into until you get there. 

And that's why this one's different. Until we built the scaffolding and got up to the upper levels we really didn't know what we were running into. 

So, everyone on the team is sort of "on hold" as to what decisions need to be made. It gets more into an actual team than I would say any of the other projects that I've run. That's because we have to do everything together. We're constantly bouncing ideas off of each other as to "How we are going to do this or do that?" I think that makes for a better decision than just relying on one historic consultant or historic architect to say, "This is how it's done." 

It's a cultural property. Many people need to be involved in the decision so a good one can be made for the long-term.

- Narrator: Restoration of the rotunda involved ordinary tasks, uncommon conditions... and the unique conservation of world class art. Window rehabilitation is a common task in most projects, but the 20 cathedral windows of the rotunda posed an uncommon challenge. Several team members assessed their condition and plans were made for each phase of their rehabilitation. Their disassembly and repair off-site was exacerbated by Wisconsin's cold winter weather.

- Man: That was a little nervous.

- Man: You got it?

- Steve Melahn: You can see it. I mean, it takes a little while and you've got to be fairly careful. The trick is using a good, sharp chisel. Normally, we would use a hot iron on these windows in order to get this putty softened up but we have found that with the hot iron we were losing too much glass and we wanted to save the glass.

- Narrator: Broken or damaged panes were replaced with custom-made glass from the same Indiana company that produced the originals 85 years earlier. Just below the windows an uncommon challenge was being met by team members working on the scagliola columns. Scagliola is a form of decorative finish found in only a few historic buildings. It was typically used to imitate expensive stone or marble at a fraction of the cost.

- Koenig: This is a section of the outer shell. If you think about it kind of like your tooth. That's a lot what it's like. There's a soft, inner plaster and there's a very, very hard plaster on the outside. 

The way that they carried this out originally was they would lay out the canvases and they would float this very, very hard plaster slurry on it, create the swirls that you see to look like marble. And then, once it had dried to a plastic place where it could actually be moved they would put it up on the plaster, smooth it off and actually pull the canvas off. 

The problem is that, over the years although they've weathered well and we haven't lost any pieces off of them-- The outside shell, that really is what you see when you look at it. It looks like marble-- has come loose from the inner plaster. The only way that we can re-attach that is to actually drill holes in it and inject consolidants inside that will re-adhere those different layers together. What we're using, by the way, is a modified cattle syringe. So every time you pull the trigger it's putting a fairly measured, small amount in here.

- Narrator: The collaborative nature of all aspects of the project helped Koenig get his job done. Koenig: I've never worked on a job before where we had such full access to something that we're working on. This is perfect. I can get all the way around it. They've laid out the scaffolding in a way that's real accessible. I know that it sounds like a small thing but I've worked on a lot of State Capitols where you could never have gotten this close and actually got in and done the work right. There's also an attitude difference that I've found with the folks who are working here. I've never worked on a project before where we had that kind of communication. We are a team.

- Narrator: A similar process was used to restore four glass mosaic panels by Kenyon Cox, unique and valuable works of art. But only after exhaustive study. When they were installed in 1913 these murals, representing: legislation government liberty and justice, were among the first large-scale glass mosaic installations in America. Cox created them in New York then applied a paper facing, which was removed after the mosaics were affixed to the four pendentives in the rotunda. 

- Connie Silver: One of my colleagues feels that this mosaic, especially is comparable in quality of artistry and craftsmanship 
to about anything in the world that he's ever seen.

- Narrator: But the team discovered that some of the mosaic pieces were in danger of falling off the rotunda wall possibly because a mortar applied during the initial installation had shrunk and caused detachment. 

- Maura Donnelly: This mosaic is rare because most mosaics are on a flat plane. This is in a concave plane. That adds, probably, additional stress in it that you're trying some way to keep it attached to the plane of the wall yet gravity wants always to pull things forward and down.

- Narrator: A transparent netting was installed to hold the glass tiles in place until the team decided on the best method to stabilize them. But first, came the intricate process of cleaning and restoring them. You can start to see some of these coatings here. It seems to be a standard oil resin varnish and possibly some kind of a silicone put into it. But it's fairly simple to remove it with some rather standard solvents.

- Narrator: Care was taken to protect the tessera created by applying aluminum leaf to the back of yellow pieces of glass.

- Silver: When it comes to the cleaning or the removal of these coatings what I don't want is to have my solvents somehow run behind, through an open join and run down.

- Narrator: There was a possibility that the solvent could dissolve the adhesive that bonds the aluminum leaf to the back of the tessera.

- Silver: We now have to really think I think, pretty seriously about filling these cracks before we go ahead with the cleaning. So, how we're going to fill the cracks becomes a decision that we'll have to make as a team. In the '60s, they tried to either reset some pieces or stabilize pieces. And this sort of looks like mortar that just got smeared. This, unfortunately looks very suspiciously like Portland cement to me. It's about the worst thing that you could use. 

It's, it's too strong and leaves these gross, very obvious sort of light grey lines. What you're really seeing-- You're not really seeing the tessera, you're seeing the lines. So, at some point, as the work progresses in its final stages we are going to have to retouch all of these little lines to make them appear more like an historic join, here. 

There are actually at least four or five visual planes here. And it's never going to read correctly unless you get all of these surfaces to be exactly as the artist wanted them. So, that's been, I think the most exciting thing about this restoration. I think they probably look better now-- They will look better now than when they were installed. 

Every single piece was cut by hand in the studio. And to do these cuts one after another, after another, after another so that they all fit so beautifully is real artistry. What's been very exciting about this project is actually getting all of the correct textures of the glass tessera back to the artist's Kenyon Cox's, original intent. Unless you have all of these textures correct the three-dimensionality doesn't read.

- Narrator: The cleaned and restored mosaic panels still needed to be stabilized. The team sought opinions from many experts. We had one expert from New York, who had done a lot of restoration in Turkey and Asia say that this was the most difficult restoration project he had ever seen. 

Most of the time, when you're restoring mosaics or works of art, it's because of some external after-the-fact damage an earthquake, or pollution, or fire or outside water damage. 

This one failed in its initial installation. And that makes it even more difficult. 

There was two groups who believed that we should study it further for another six months to a year and analyze what went wrong and all the issues. 

And then there was a German group who had a lot of experience in mosaics, who said: "Just inject an epoxy behind it and walk away from it."

- Manfred Hoen: I was sure from the very beginning that this repair or restoration of these mosaics can be done only with a very low viscosity product. We had a lot of good experience with the epoxy resin. 

- Donnelly: The German group had a very good reputation and a very good background but the irreversibility of epoxy was what really had us nervous. We're a little sensitive about fixing something or attempting to fix something and then, if our fix becomes a mistake never being able to go back in and correct it. 

So, we put the German proposal on hold and we contracted with one of the other groups whose proposal was to do a lot more testing. Their conclusion was it had to be taken completely off, all the aluminum leaf removed from the glass, reset and put back on, and have some new methodology to adhere it. 

And at that point in time, we really stepped back and thought, well, what's more intrusive? 

Injecting an epoxy that is not reversible but means it will still be up there 100 years from now or completely taking it off hoping you don't break any of the glass taking the aluminum off and putting it back on again by some new untried technique. 

It's never me and my construction team making this decision. It's me, my construction team, the executive conference team, which includes senators and outside consultants and historic society members. So, there's about maybe 100 people behind the decision that we were going to go with the Germans. Here, you have just a coat, a glass coat. And it must be brought together.

- Narrator: The German team's first challenge was to locate the hollow places underneath the mosaics.

- Hoen: And then, we drilled holes into it and we set-- And then, we have a low-pressure machine that is combined with the drilling machine. And you can pump, by lowest pressure, into the epoxy into the mosaic hollow spaces. You can see how it runs here, you see?

- Narrator: Even at low pressure some of the epoxy made its way back out and had to be contained. 
[speaking German]

 Good, good, good, good. Okay, epoxy... and the worry, and... you can hear, if you're taking a hammer or something and you push it on it, it's really solid. That means that the epoxy penetrated into the plaster and sticking on the glass. So, we have a really compact, solid layer with the background and the glass again. And I am sure that it never will happen anymore. Maybe in 200 years, I don't know.

- Narrator: The stabilization process left intact the aluminum leaf backing on the mosaics which had been tarnished by a reaction to the mortar used in the original installation.

- Donnelly: The tarnishing will permanently be embedded in there. We're never going to be able to change it. But that mistake also tells a story. And it tells a story of the artist's attempt and the nouveau techniques that they tried at the turn of the century. And it's all part of the history of the mosaics.

- Narrator: The mosaic restoration was a special case where the techniques used were not reversible. But reversibility was an important element of all other aspects of the rotunda project. 
We're the caretakers of this building for a short time, 10 or 15 years. 
In another 20, 30, 50 years, there'll be another group doing something similar to us.

- Narrator: The team also met the challenge of restoring another unique work by a major American artist the mural Edwin Blashfield painted for the oculus of the rotunda. 

And this is quite a tour-de-force because what we have here is a 36-foot diameter. And it's very interesting to study the mural and see how it was actually done. 

The mural was done in a studio in New York City. What the artist did was to do it in three sections. But he repeated figures planning for the splicing of them together. Because, since it's a curved surface it's kind of tricky to get this painted canvas to fit inside the dome. 

And so then, once the canvas was brought and installed it was spliced. The different places where the canvas joins were then troweled over and retouched. And the retouchings weren't probably by the artist. It's actually quite crude, and they interfere with the composition.

- Narrator: Part of the restoration process was to in-paint small areas of loss. But the in-painting over the splices was the most exciting aspect.

- Bernstein: And as those areas are dotted in then the picture comes together and you see it in all its glory. The goal of in-painting is to just dot color over the location of damage. That is to stay-- It's sort of like coloring along the lines, just staying right in the area of damage without covering original color. You could imagine a whole day of this. It gets to you. 
[laughs]

It's quite painstaking and not all that romantic. 
[laughs]

- Narrator: Restoration of the mural began with extensive research.

- Bernstein: The most important aspect before beginning any restoration is the study of the art work. Even other paintings by Blashfield might give indications that are different from this painting. And so, what does the painting tell you from how it is executed, the details, the conditions? Here we can see an interesting feature, a pentimento, or a "repent in the meant," or change in thought by the artist. He originally planned to have the foot down here. 

Then, as he continued with the composition he changed his mind and had the foot here, but it's very thinly painted, and as oil becomes more transparent with time now you can see the ghost of that coming through. And that's all noted in reports. It's documented photographically. Tests are made to see what is possible in terms of cleaning. A proposal is designed and discussed and we accept it. And it becomes a joint decision. 

In this instance, Blashfield is using actually quite traditional technique and materials. What's different is the scale. And because of the scale and how broadly and thinly it's painted the treatment becomes very tricky. The painting is actually quite thin. It's almost a colored drawing. And so, because of that, there is no room for error. 

And in any restoration-- today we call it conservation-- the goal is to be able to get back to the original. At one time in the past, this was coated with an insoluble coating. And now, we cannot remove that. All of these restorations on the coating are being done with reversible materials, materials that can be removed, let's say 30, 40 years from now if they want to get back to the original and then do another study and restoration.

- Narrator: This restoration brought out the luminosity of the colors. Combined with updated lighting, the impact on the viewer meets Blashfield's original intent. During the installation of the mural he wrote that a great structure should teach from within and without by proportion and scale, by picture and stature the history of the people who built it to celebrate patriotism, inculcate morals and to stand as the visible concrete symbol of high endeavor. 

The conservation of the painting is not an isolated act. It has to be worked into all of the schedules here. There's plastering going on, gilding, structural work. Then there will be the lighting. It's really a formidable team effort. And it's remarkable how beautifully it's being done here in Madison. 

- Johnson: You can't let one go ahead and do his work and then nobody else can get in there. And the teamwork, in this aspect, 
has really paid off. And it benefits everybody. We get a better job. The contractors get the chance to make a fair profit. I think everybody that works here really gets involved with the building and you realize what a treasure we have here. And everybody takes pride in their work.

- Quagliana: We do a thing like where each of the workers, before they actually start working on-site has to go through an orientation session, about an hour long. We show them "pretty pictures" if you will of the history of the building, how the architects and engineers have designed everything before they get to building and why quality craftsmanship is important not only to them, but to their kids.

- Johnson: Talking to the workers, I've had 'em mention, "Gee, his father worked here "or his grandfather worked on the original Capitol." Especially the people that work with the woodwork they feel it a real honor that they say they never get the chance to work with that quality of woodwork and the cabinetry that we do. It's amazing, if you look at all the wood details, the corners and the trim and how well the joints fit. I don't think you'll find that on many other projects. 

You get on some projects that are, I guess kind of "That's good enough" and "We gotta hurry up." And this is just a neat, neat ball game here for me. I guess I consider it a real honor to be here. Just to work in the State Capitol. I mean, it's something nobody else 
would probably do in their lifetime. I mean, if they work in the construction trade.

- Yaeger: If we don't have good plaster to work with, our work doesn't look good. And so, you know, we work with the plasterers. 
We also work with some of the people who do the flat painting. Everyone's equally dependent. There are so many talented people have come before who've done the electrical work, restructured the infrastructure of the buildings so it can continue to be used, to be a vital building. 

The plasterers, woodworkers, everyone. We're really putting the icing on the cake. So, people notice our work, it's highly visible whereas, you know, the people behind the stage are equally important in their contributions. I prefer working on restoration projects. The challenges are different than they are to residential or new work. You really are a part of-- You become part of the history of the building when you work on it.

- Brian Fick: The location of the State Capitol building is such that people pass through it on a daily basis. And so, it's very, very important to the community. They see it every day. 
Bringing a building back to where it has its intrinsic power 
is what's really exciting. 

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- Eric Oxendorph: It's like our own little Washington, D.C., right here in Wisconsin. It's akin to the Acropolis or the Coliseum in Rome. This is a timeless building, it will always be here. And it's right here where I live. It's a man-made structure that has real spiritual feelings. There's something about the womb-like feel of this round place. It seems to be a spiritually enhancing place for me. And I can never leave here without a smile on my face. 

It has been a wonderful project with the teamwork and the people that we had on it, and the murals, to the columns, to the mosaics. to recreating the stencils. What better project can I be on than to be part of the team that was able to restore the state's living room back to the way it looked in 1915 when it was first occupied? 

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