On the incredibly
lavish building that embodies a city’s contradictions—and what to do about it.
To use a current
colloquialism that seems to be the best choice for the occasion, Harrisburg’s State Capitol building is cray cray. Designed
in 1902, after the city’s longstanding first capitol building burned down (in
1897) and the very plain second was abandoned pre-completion (in 1899), the capitol
has come to be known as a “palace
of art” due to its numerous sculptures, murals, and stained-glass windows,
as well as its stunning façade and 52-million pound (!) dome modeled on Rome’s
St. Peter’s Basilica. Frankly, none of that—nor noting that the building has
been designated a National Historic
Landmark—does full justice to the experience of seeing and exploring the
building; it is, quite simply, the most lavish and overwhelming public building
I’ve been in (and the closest I’ve felt, in the United States, to being inside
the Vatican).
In 1906, the same
year that the Capitol was completed, a newly
elected State Treasurer began investigating allegations of graft in the
building’s construction; the investigation would result, two years later, in
numerous convictions, including of principal architect Joseph Miller Huston
and multiple local and state officials. On one level, this scandal reflects
quite concisely the lavish nature and Gilded Age context of the Capitol; but on
another, it highlights a contradiction between the building as the impressive,
inspiring symbol of a city and state and some of the less attractive economic
and social realities that underlay it. And those contradictions are certainly
just as present in 21st century Harrisburg, a city that still
features (and often in promotional materials foregrounds) the Capitol in all
its lavish splendor and that also filed
for federal bankruptcy in 2011 and has continued
to struggle with those financial and economic woes in the two years since.
So it’s fair to
ask, un-AmericanStudies-like as this question might seem, whether the Capitol
building should be taken apart and sold in order to make its city solvent once
more. I’m not suggesting that the art and architecture be melted down or
anything—I’m quite sure many museums and similar institutions would love to
feature these items, and in so doing would be fulfilling their civic mission
while the money might help Harrisburg and Pennsylvania better fulfill theirs. But
just because that extreme response isn’t likely doesn’t mean that we can simply
accept doing nothing as the only alternative. For example, currently admission
to and tours of the Capitol are free, and I’m willing to bet tourists would pay
(say) $5 each; the building is well worth it, and the funds could be directly
used for Harrisburg’s vital and ongoing civic needs. In any case, the
contradictions between the Capitol and the city are too overt, and too telling,
to simply take as one more illustration of the Gilded Ages, then and now.
Next Harrisburg
history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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