Today, we began our third trip to tour the National Parks and State Capitols of the United States. We plan to travel up the east coast to Acadia National Park and then go west toward Chicago, spending a week in Clifton Park for our grandson’s 5th birthday. From there, we will head southwest toward home. The entire trip should take about one month. We are off to a good start.
Our drive to Richmond was uneventful. The capitol is a beautiful white structure sitting on top of a hill.
The capitol was built from a design created by Thomas Jefferson. Because the building was designed by Jefferson, and because of Jefferson’s Virginia roots and his involvement in American History, there are many places in the building that noted his influence on Virginia and on the United States. The most obvious place was the larger than life statue of Thomas Jefferson at the entrance to the building.
The building has been updated and expanded numerous times. During one of the more recent updates, a portion of the original structure was uncovered and made available for viewing. The wooden frame is one of the original doorways into the original building which is the center portion of the capitol.
Thomas Jefferson was unhappy with some of the ways that the original building did not follow his plans. He was able to get some things changed during his lifetime, but the outside stairway to the front of the building was not completed until after Jefferson died.
Like many capitol buildings, the Virginia capitol has a rotunda. While Jefferson included the rotunda in his design, he saw the purpose of the room as a meeting room for discussions that could not occur in the chambers during sessions. He intentionally designed a smaller than usual rotunda to provide a place for those discussions. Even today, the rotunda is used by senators and representatives for those special conversations.
The rotunda has a statue of George Washington at its center. The dome above the statue is impressive and includes great artistic details.
The senate chamber was open for the tour, but the house chamber was under construction. Our tour ended in the Senate Chamber.
Our guide was quite the Thomas Jefferson historian and fan. His parting quote about Jefferson was from John F Kennedy. Apparently during a state dinner at the White House when many international leaders were present, JFK said, ” I do not think there has been this much brainpower gathered in this room, except for when Thomas Jefferson dined in this room alone.”
Our guide informed us that we could tour the capitol further, if we so desired. We decided to walk to the other end of the building to take a picture of the door to the house chamber. As we prepared to take the picture, the doors opened as the construction workers exited the chamber. We asked permission to take a picture inside the room. They said be quick. We were. Here is a picture of the House chamber being renovated.
As we left to return to our car, we saw one more interesting view of the capitol. Here is a picture of the capitol from street level in Richmond.
