Interior
The Pennsylvania State Capitol houses the chambers for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, the Pennsylvania Senate, and the Harrisburg chambers for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. The Capitol contains 475 rooms and has four floors, not including a mezzanine between the first and second floors, and a basement. The bronze entrance doors of the capitol lead into the rotunda on the first floor with the grand staircase in the center. The staircase in the rotunda is an imperial staircase, similar to the one in the Palais Garnier in Paris, France. The staircase leads to the mezzanine between the first and second floors, before dividing into two staircases leading to the second floor. Edwin Austin Abbey painted four allegorical medallions around the base of the capitol dome, detailing the "four forces of civilization": Art, Justice, Science, and Religion. Four lunette murals were also painted by Abbey and "symbolize Pennsylvania's spiritual and industrial contributions to modern civilization". The lunettes are situated in the recesses of each arch in the rotunda. The rotunda is paved with tiles, hand-crafted by Henry Chapman Mercer, from the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works. Mercer produced 1,600 square feet (100 m2) of tile, which includes "377 mosaics, representing 254 scenes, artifacts, animals, birds, fish, insects, industries and workers from Pennsylvania history".
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Famous quotes containing the word interior:
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Alas! when Virtue sits high aloft on a frigate’s poop, when Virtue is crowned in the cabin of a Commodore, when Virtue rules by compulsion, and domineers over Vice as a slave, then Virtue, though her mandates be outwardly observed, bears little interior sway.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Fish have water, the bushmen of the Kalahari have sand, and Houstonians have interior décor.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)