Renovation
The building was renovated during 1999-2000 under the auspices of the Architect of the Capitol, who at the time was Alan M. Hantman, FAIA. Day-to-day supervision of the project carried out by Assistant Architect Michael G. Turnbull, FAIA. The renovation was well received by Senators and their staff. Senator Robert F. Bennett of Utah, Chairman of the Senate Legislative Branch Subcommittee, made the following comments regarding the renovation:
- When I came here, the Dirksen Building was considered the low-rent district, and Senators would start their careers in the Dirksen Building and then move out as quickly as they possibly could. I have nostalgia for the Dirksen Building because this is where my father had his office, and I was very content to stay here.... Now that it has been renovated--and mine was the first suite to be renovated--I consider that we are in the high-rent district.
- ... thank you for the truly well thought out way in which this building is being renovated. It is now work space that will serve the needs of the Senators for another 50 years. It is roughly 50 years since the Dirksen Building was conceived, and I am sure that we will get our money's worth out of it.
Read more about this topic: Dirksen Senate Office Building
Famous quotes containing the word renovation:
“Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Postmodernity is the simultaneity of the destruction of earlier values and their reconstruction. It is renovation within ruination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)