7 November 2024

Iowa State Capitol

The State Capitol project is starting to seem eternal as we put number 14 on the books: Iowa.

Located in Des Moines, the Iowa State Capitol (also commonly known as the Iowa Statehouse) was completed in 1886.

It’s the only five-domed capitol in the country. It was approved with a $1.5 million budget, but as these things go, wound up costing $2.9 million.

The 40-foot-wide painting is Westward (1905), “an idealized representation of the coming of the people who made Iowa,” by Edwin H. Blashfield. Above it on the next for is a series of six glass mosaics, each 14 feet high!

In 1904 a major fire swept through the building, resulting in a large restoration project. At that time, electrical lighting, elevators, and telephones were installed. Over the next several decades, not much was done by way of maintenance, and by the early 1980s, it was obviously major work needed to be done. A restoration from 1998 to 2001 cost $41 million.

The dome is covered in tissue-paper-thin 23-carat gold sheets. The last re-gilding was done 1998-1999 at a cost of nearly half a million dollars.

Doug ranks this capitol in the middle of the pack. Our tour guide was especially enthusiastic, the walkway at the top of the dome made the climb up to it worthwhile, and the law library was stunning! Click here to see how Doug thinks the Iowa State Capitol ranks compared to the others we’ve seen so far.

The dome rises 275 above ground level. The Grand Army of the Republic flag at the very center is actually suspended below the ceiling on wires,
The House Gallery. The center columns under the electric display of names can be matched up to the photo after the 1904 fire.
During the 1904 fire, the entire ceiling in the House collapsed to the floor below, taking down the grand skylight and brass chandeliers, which were also destroyed.
The State Law Library of Iowa is absolutely stunning! Check out the circular staircase and all the iron grill-work. The library contains more than 100,000 volumes.
The Senate Gallery.
A statue on the Capitol grounds of Abraham Lincoln with his son Tad, who died at age 18. Funds for the monument, dedicated in 1961s, were raised by Iowa schoolchildren and a booth at the Iowa State Fair.
There are eight lunettes (the half-circle paintings) around the inside of the dome, by Kenyon Cox. The two pictured are Hunting and Herding. Underneath is a quote from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “This nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
250,000 sheets of gold leaf are pressed together to gild the dome. If stacked together they’d only measure one inch thick!
Looking down underneath the dome.

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