Restoration
In 1904, when fire swept through the areas that now house the Supreme Court and Iowa House of Representatives, major restoration was performed and documented, with the addition of electrical lighting, elevators, and a telephone system. Little information is available about who performed the actual restoration during these early years.
These earlier efforts to preserve the Capitol mostly dealt with maintaining and upgrading its interior. It was not until 1965, when the dome was regilded, that legislators made significant investments in preserving the building’s exterior.
By the early 1980s, the exterior of the Capitol had noticeably deteriorated. Sandstone pieces had begun falling from the building, prompting the installation of steel canopies at all entrances of the building to protect pedestrians. Decorative stone, whose deterioration had first been documented as early as the start of the 20th century, had also eroded.
Work on the exterior restoration began in the spring of 1983 and was completed in nine phases. Phase 9 work began in the spring of 1998, and the entire project was completed in the fall of 2001, at a cost of $41 million.
Read more about this topic: Iowa State Capitol
Famous quotes containing the word restoration:
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)