Idaho — The Potato Dome

image courtesy of Travelin'Librarian through Creative Commons

This entry about the general impression of Idaho's capitol is a bit different from the other entries below. Each other entry refers to the general impression the entire building gives, while this one for Idaho refers to just the dome.

The Idaho capitol dome is very tall. It is proportionately taller than any other capitol dome, except possibly Maine's, which is pictured just below this entry on Idaho. While the bottom of most domes would be somewhere in the area of the windows on Idaho's dome, Idaho's continues below the windows more than just a little.

The dome and the entire Idaho capitol look brown in most images and gray in only a few, with the dome considerably lighter than the building. The Maine state house dome mentioned above and shown below is green (it probably will turn black with age) which makes it different enough for us to avoid confusing it with the Idaho capitol dome.

image courtesy of Dhirad through Creative Commons

Onion Domes
Idaho's dome appears to be narrower at its base than it is higher up in many images. Is it an illusion? It might not be. Domes can be a small part of a sphere like the low dome of North Carolina's capitol, or they can be a larger part, even more than half of a sphere like the famous onion dome of the Taj Mahal.

image courtesy of Donald L. Mark

image courtesy of Rick Audet

Potato Producers
Washington, Oregon, and Idaho apparently form a "potato bowl." All three states boast of fantastic potato harvests, and Idaho alone accounts for 30% of all potatoes produced in the USA. With such high potato production figures and a lot of great publicity over the decades, Idaho is the most famous of the three states for potatoes. Most nonresidents immediately think of the potato when they hear "Idaho." The Russet Burbank potato is one of over thirty varieties grown in Idaho, but it is by far the most produced one, and it is the one known as the Idaho potato.

An Association
It's brown, it's round and rather long, and it has a large expanse of fairly smooth surface. It actually looks quite a bit like the end of a brown potato, especially when compared to our other domes. So, the potato dome is from the state famous for what we know as the "Idaho potato." This is just a guess, but Idaho might well be the only state that wouldn't mind having its capitol dome compared to a potato!
 

Maine — Beautifully Simple, or . . .

At first glance, there is nothing particularly unusual about the Maine state house. It has a dome and columns and a portico entrance, the typical classic capitol with no notable embellishments. There seems to be nothing unique to the building except the statue on top of the dome. Then the difference finally reveals itself; this classic state house is uniquely, beautifully, simple.

Every feature of the front entrance and dome is as tidy and uncluttered as it can be. Every line is straight and clean. The cupola is round and open, the dome is solid with no windows or ports, the drum windows are simple squares and rectangles, the pediment has no sculpture – except for the dome statue, there is no sculpture anywhere. There isn't even any sculpture on the column capitals (tops). There isn't even any fluting on the columns. Everything is simple.

An Association
The Maine state house is beautifully simple. There are other ways to say that; it is very clean, uncluttered, sleek. All true, but not very helpful considering our purpose here. For our association we need a rhyme, so we use "plain," even though it is not always considered a compliment. The capitol that is uniquely plain is in Maine. Plain Maine. It also helps to add Jane to the rhyme. The gilded statue on the dome, the only sculpture, is female, and we'll call her Jane. So, the rhyme becomes; the capitol that is uniquely plain with Jane is in Maine. Plain - Jane - Maine.

Originally constructed from 1829 to 1832, the Maine state house underwent major remodeling in 1911. The original front wall with the colonnaded portico in the center was left standing and was extended on each end. The dome was replaced with the current, much taller one, and the statue was added.

The Maine state house has enough mature trees on the front grounds to obscure most of the building from view. The most common type of photo shows only the center portion like the image above. This view tends to accentuate the simple lines of the entrance and dome.

The drawing at left was made during or soon after the reconstruction of 1911. It gives a good idea of the size and style of the entire structure, which we can't see in most current images.

Pennsylvania — A Giant's Toy (?)

image courtesy of Red All Over Design

Front
The entire front of the Pennsylvania capitol is difficult to get into one photograph. The crowded cityscape shown below should explain that problem - the other buildings get in the way.

image courtesy of Scooter Flix

 
Photos of the front of this capitol rarely include either side portico unless they are taken from an angle like the one below.

image courtesy of Nishant Mathur

Back
This capitol has a most interesting rear facade, which is often pictured whole. The depth from the fountain (the small, white thing is the water) in front of the arched doorway to the dome is immense, though it doesn't look like it here. To get a better idea, you can see an arial view of the complex in Favorites, Footprints where the fountain is in the center of the circle to the right. The photo above was taken from across the street.

An Association (Almost Two)
I have been wary of placing this association on the Internet ever since it occurred to me. You see, the folks who love this beautiful capitol, and I believe there are many, might not like me saying it looks like it is poked full of holes! But that's what I see, a building with a dome and walls that have more round windows and ports than is at all usual, as if some giant, playful child took a pen and poked it all over. It was just too easy to ignore. So, there it is, the pen-poked capitol is in Pen- Pennsylvania.

But . . .
It seems a shame to not use the truly unique dome for the identification association. The green tiles make a striking finish and could be imagined as green ink leaked from a pen, which would lead to the same end to the association as above; Pen- Pennsylvania. However, we have many state capitols with copper domes, and when they are refinished, they go through a period of aging where they are green. This makes Pennsylvania's green dome, though still gorgeous, not unique enough for our association.

Tennessee — The Ship on a High Sea

image courtesy of
SeeMidTN

Capitol Hill
The Tennessee capitol is on top of Capitol Hill in Nashville, making it visible from most locations in the area, and making it sometimes appear to be floating in air. The hilltop location and the dropped terrace surrounding the capitol also cause most close pictures of the capitol to be taken from a viewpoint below, rather than level with, the building.

This capitol is frequently pictured from an end. Like many capitols, there is a portico with pedestrian access on each side of the building, but the formal front is the long, northeast side facing the Cumberland River.

Another Association
For the less romantic, familiarize yourself first with the Texas capitol, and then just remember the capitol that looks like an upside-down "T" is for the other state that starts with T: Tennessee.

Construction
Native Tennessee limestone and marble were used extensively in the construction of the Tennessee state capitol building. The crystalline, fossilated limestone for the exterior was quarried near Nashville. More recently, repairs during exterior restoration have been made using Indiana limestone. A 17-foot-wide terrace surrounds the building.

A combination of Greek styles is represented by a Doric base, Ionic porticos on each side inspired by the Erectheum in Athens, and Corinthian columns in the lantern.

image courtesy of
Mary Ann Sullivan, Bluffton University

An Association, or Two
The simple shape of the Tennessee capitol, its single, centered tower, and its position on top of a hill allow an imaginative viewer to see it rather like a ship on a high sea. Considering the photo below of a single-funnel ship and the image above of the Tennessee capitol, can you see the capitol as a ship on a high sea? Which sea? Tenne-see.

image source: State Library of Victoria
creator: Allan C. Green

Utah — Orderly, Regimented

The most obvious feature of the Utah state capitol below the dome is the totally uniform colonnade going across the entire front and the sides of the building. Many other capitols have columns, nearly always at the main entrance, and many of those have half-columns set against the front wall on both sides of the entrance. No capitol besides Utah's has such uniformly sized and spaced, detached columns across the entire facade.

The Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Washington capitols have a lot of columns also, but on each of them the ends of the main entrance portico have block sections that break the line of columns. They also have a less uniform roof line than Utah has, and their wings end in another block section that again breaks the line of columns before the end of the building. The orderly and regimented appearance of those uniform columns across the entire front is definitely unique to Utah.

 
 
image courtesy of
Edward Crim photographer,
the State Capitols project

An Association
While many of us already know Salt Lake City is the capital of the State of Utah, many more know it as the world headquarters of the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Almost half of the population of Salt Lake City is Mormon, and approximately nine million people of all religions come to see the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City every year. I doubt the state capitol gets anywhere near that amount of attention.

I am not qualified to discuss the Mormon ways or beliefs, so I won't. This is simply a reference to a widely held impression of Mormons, that they are orderly and regimented. So, the capitol with so many orderly and regimented columns is in the capital with so many orderly and regimented Mormons – Salt Lake City, Utah.

Vermont — The Capitol in the Green Hills

The Vermont State House is different from most in its size and setting. Montpelier is the smallest capital city in the nation. The capitol also is small, as state capitols go, and it is set virtually into a wooded hill. As a matter of fact, part of the hill was blasted away to make a suitable site for an earlier State House, and now that hill is always visible in photos since it is so close behind the current building. There is always the general impression that this capitol is in the wooded hills.

Several previous State Houses occupied the same site, so in any images from 1857 or earlier the building will look different while the green backdrop will be the same. The portico survived the fire that destroyed the previous capitol and was incorporated into this one. When this capitol was first completed in 1859, the dome was painted terra cotta red. It was then gilded in the early part of the twentieth century.

 
 
image courtesy of omerka

This image is public through a
Creative Commons Deed

An Association
The impression of being in the wooded hills is very easy to connect to Vermont when you know how the state's name originated. The area was named “Verd Mont” for the Green Mountains Range back in 1761. “Verd” Or “Vert” means “green” in French, and while we call our peaks “Mount,” as in Mount McKinley or Mount St. Helens, the French name theirs “Mont,” as in Mont Blanc. So, the capitol in the green, wooded hill is in the Verd Mont – Vermont.