Friday, May 5, 2017

State Capitol is now a national landmark.

The U.S. Department of the Interior designated the Mississippi State Capitol as a national historic landmark.*  The Capitol has been lauded for many years as a beautiful work of art.  Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewel stated in the press release:

The Mississippi State Capitol is a nationally significant example of Academic Classical Revival architecture, providing a remarkably vivid illustration of the nationwide spread of Academic Classicism following the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Designed by St. Louis architect Theodore Link, the building is notable among state capitols for its unity of design and construction, having been built by a single general contracting firm, W. A. and A. E. Wells of Chicago, within a single three-year construction program.

JJ honored the Capitol with this video last year (that earned a chewing by the FAA):




 Kingfish note: Completed in three years.  Out of state firms are used for design and construction and it all came together beautifully.  What is wrong with this picture?

*Note to residents of certain rural counties in Mississippi: This designation does NOT mean the federal government is taking over the Mississippi State Capitol.  

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

A National Landmark for and a great symbol of Mediocrity....

Kingfish said...

Damn, do you people ever get happy about anything?

Anonymous said...

Damn, do you people ever get happy about anything?

Not as long as all these Baptists keep us from having a lottery!

Anonymous said...

eagle facing south

Anonymous said...

Cool.

My great-grandfather who then lived in St. Louis, Mo helped install the state-of-art air conditioning system (an ice house in the basement with fans which forced cool air through the ventilation system), then married my great-grandmother and stayed.

Anonymous said...

I think we can all agree it's a beautiful building -- can we at least get folks to agree on that??

Southern by the grace of God. said...

10:31, more than just the eagle faces south. The front, or main entrance, to the building faces south too. Remember, this building was completed in 1903 (I think) and there was still VERY strong anti northern sentiment not just in Mississippi, but in the rest of the south as well. Having the capitol building facing south was a statement of sorts.

PittPanther said...

Yet, the Capitol building site is on the Northern boundary of downtown.

Mississippi can't even get their anti northern statements implemented correctly.

Kingfish said...

Downtown Jackson is South. There wasn't much north of the capitol in 1903.

Anonymous said...

Why wouldn't they face the eagle to the east? Considering that the sun rises in the east?

Anonymous said...

12:31, cuz they knew that the South was gonna rise again.

Anonymous said...

Why would they face the eagle to the east just because the sun rises in the east?

Of the few eagles on state capitals that I can think of, they face all sorts of directions

Anonymous said...

State capitol was built on the land of an old penitentiary because they knew nothing but crooks would reside there

Anonymous said...

We're gonna have to hock that eagle if things get any worse(er)

Anonymous said...

They wouldn't face the eagle to the east because the entrance is on the south. It would look absolutely silly to face to either side other than where one enters -- either the North or South.

Capitol was built on the northern side of what was then Jackson, but the planned growth was in that direction. But the reason it was built there was the state penitentiary was already there solving some of the site preparation issues. It was paid for with a lawsuit settlement from the railroads - one of the state's first trial lawyer lawsuit. Difference then was the state got the benefit of all the money, not some campaign contributors of the Attorney General.

Anonymous said...

It's time to recall Jackson Daily News Editor Fred Sullens editorial remarks about the campaign of Theodore Bilbo; If Bilbo was elected, he wrote, "the great eagle surmounting the dome of the State Capitol building should be replaced by a puking buzzard." We may need to bring that statement back as a note to some of today's Capitol occupants.

Anonymous said...

I'm very happy and proud about this. Thanks for sharing, KF.

Anonymous said...

That eagle facing south as a protest thing is garbage. Like KF said, the Capitol was built on the north side of town and it faced the city. I've heard that story about the eagle facing away from the US Capitol my whole life and I think it's utter crap. Yes, it faces south. SFW? It's a bald eagle - the symbol of the US. Not a mockingbird or a Confederate soldier or some other thing.

This website shows that Idaho, New Hampshire, and West Virginia all have eagles on their Capitol domes and none of them face DC. So all you people who see nothing but racism in the state's past need to look elsewhere for something to whine about.

Anonymous said...

It is a beautiful building and it cost the amazing sum of $1 million to build. About what IMS gets a year.

Anonymous said...

I remember reading an article describing the Mississippi Capitol building and it stated that the eagle is "facing defiantly South".

Deo Vindice.. said...

The cost was four million, not one million. But I'm surprised the feds would recognize it unless we agreed to wipe it clean of anything that might invoke a Confederate memory. The Bonnie Blue flew over our capitol the day after secession. Time for that again. 'Those People' won't object since they have no clue.

Anonymous said...

Deo Vindice - better check your facts. All historic documents, funding, legislation, etc show that the building cost $1 million and change (probably, $1,093,000). If you check the state's application for National Historic Landmark designation, page 19, there is an entire paragraph describing the decision to build the capitol, authorization for a $1 million bond, and a lawsuit against Illinois Central RR and its subsidiaries for 'unpaid taxes'. The state won a lawsuit for the $1 million and it was used to pay the cost of the building, with a few minor expenditures in excess - basically earthwork, landscaping,and other costs.

Details, I know. But the application contains a lot of interesting descriptors of the building, its design, construction, and history. Worth the read if you don't have anything else to do and are actually interested in the history of the building

Anonymous said...

So even way back then the State of Miss'ippi was using lawsuits to pay for shit, I guess that's another fine tradition!

Anonymous said...

That $1,000,000 would be about $26,000,000 in today's money. It would cost much more than that to build such a quality structure today. I would thinks at least 5x as much. Perhaps as much as 10x.

Micah said...

A hissing possum would look fine on top.

Anonymous said...

Supertalk news reported earlier this week that the building's cost was four million and Supertalk ain't never told a lie.

Anonymous said...

I have been to the beautiful Capitol by the same architect in St. Paul, MN. The MN Capitol is a lot bigger. I think the Wisconsin Capitol is also by the same firm.

Anonymous said...

706, getting anything called news from ST is a mistake. Over the last two weeks I have heard their chirpy little voice doing what they call the news report -appears to be taking press releases and 'talking'them rather than reading direct, and reporting absolutely incorrect facts. Yesterday reported that states'bond rating' had been lowered -which is not accurate. S&P lowered the outlook, but not the rating.

The $1 million is fact - but probably using their recent fascination with all Trump all the time - they probably exaggerated it by just a bit.

Anonymous said...

'...facing defiantly South...' sounds like nothing more than Bill Minor bullshit. Or Jerry Mitchell. Or Marty Wiseman. Or Sid Salter.



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