historical societies lecture and we're delighted to have the state official with us david c generator from the state of vermont and his main focus of course in our state  state building many many years and he was one of the first three officials in the state building commission to take a genuine interest in the early sta couldn't help but notice but i visited probably two years ago and one of one of you was at the counter as i came in and i spent a really delightful hour or two really taking the stand and i have to say you've done a fabulous job here this is our premier building and when it comes to mills this is the mill that has maybe the highest  profile of many of the mills throughout our moms and you have done a wonderful job keeping it going keeping it preserved not an easy undertaking and i fully appreciate that straight out of graduate school twenty five twenty six years old my closest friend immediately that year was phil elmore who was the curator of the historical society for many years until his untimely death and i was in this little tiny town in a state that i had come to know as a summer resident my parents were my father was a college professor my grandparents own did a walled farm house down and doris and so we spent summers as a child i grew up with life magazine on the coffee table in ohio  where i grew up and always felt the new england was where i wanted to live once i was through school but i went to deposit your diversity in  private liberal arts college and then ohio state for graduate work and i just finished song a little loud in historic preservation magazine which i subscribed to for  research assistant to work on a project in montpelier vermont to study the vermont statehouse and i came out interviewed for the job they paid me with the seat a program which was not exactly intended for grads where the work kind of people but it was the way they could pay me you know i i barely could pay my bills on what i was making but i spent the next two years immersing myself as daniel robins research assistant daniel robins was a dartmouth college art and architectural historian former director of the fog museum and various steam the architectural historian and i was thrilled to be at his elbow he would zip in do a quick little assessment of what we needed to accomplish that week and then i was the person working day in day out in the library of the vermont historical society of the state archives over here at new v m and special collections on earth in virtually everything about this building that could be on earth and trying to understand to the best of our ability what they fist free of this place was and how it might be more effectively interpreted to the many visitors who were already poring through it and have always pored through it what happened to the state house in the seventy's was the reason for the project in one nine hundred seventy one they reapportion vermont's legislature in the late sixty's and that all of a sudden they had one hundred too many desks and chairs in that big old house chamber and so they needed to get rid of one hundred or so desks and chairs and that led in turn to a renovation of the building for the first time in over one hundred years they had not changed the systems for heating and ventilating air conditioning and electrifying of the event and all of these systems were updated but in doing it unfortunately they really didn't exactly turn back the clock and they did a lot of damage to the state house in ten years later in the late seventy's there was already a backlash occurring and that's when the friends of the state house were born as a private nonprofit advocates led by barbara snelling and other heavy hitters in vermont's political world and those people teamed up with our team of researchers and historians and we came up with a plan to house back to the nineteenth century and found just as importantly kept it a vibrant and active twenty first century capitol building because what makes this building unique is not that it looks the way it did in the middle of the nineteenth century but that it is in active use and it looks the way it did in the nineteenth century so those two things together are what makes the building special not one or the other it's the two combined and in a state like vermont i think we are blessed with the ability to continue to do that kind of thing repeatedly with our historic buildings and find new new new life for them such as you have done here at the mill and or trying to the best of our ability to keep the old life that they've always enjoyed intact and if we can continue to use them in that way and vermonters from town halls to state capitals to county court houses we are blessed with a wealth of old fabulous nineteenth century for the most part historic buildings that are still quite useful to us and that's what makes us special not the fact that they're being run as museums because that's not the point we know that museums are not the way that all historic buildings should be treated but in our case happily it's a marriage of museum and functioning building and happily as well like my dad we don't insist the baptists happen at the same time the state house is so small that we couldn't possibly have the legislature and all the lobbyist's and all the people who packed it from january to may at the same time that tour buses roll up to the door and on the loads hundreds of tourists happily those two seasons are separate from one another and that's what makes it work otherwise it wouldn't work frankly quite as smoothly as it does so i'm going to start zipping through some slides and tell a little of the story of this one hundred  fifty year old state capitol hill this is an old postcard obviously with the sweet little ditty that you can see there  the same house have wonderful grounds out in the front and we will change the flowers out seasonally so the use of the tulips of course that are waiting to spring forth from the vols that were planted j last fall and yes we have to take them out every year because the same beds have to be used for and the walls in the summer and other annuals in the fall so we have three different the months fabulous photographers he has teamed up with nancy graff and me to write a book and the book is pretty much written this point we hope to have it out maybe this fall and the title is the title that i would have used on this talk if i had changed that first slot but i did it's buildings throughout the city throughout the state certainly is a very ground building is never the last remarkably intimate and i think perhaps the highest compliment that anyone can pay a state capital is that you think that capital absolutely fits the state for which it was created and on ours certainly dives if any of you in it before you know that is tight quarters for the legislative season but that type quarters creates a sense of intimacy that i would submit is lacking in most other capital buildings in the united states out on the front the massive doric fluted columns that actually date back to the eighteenth thirty's even though the rest of the building dates back to the late eighteenth fifty's and the front door was these massive pine doors that were painted imitation of bronze so that you would think that they were the bronze doors of and that tally and renaissance public building with the statue of ethan allen the has always been to the right of those massive doors ever since larkin meads original sculpture ended up on the portico by default it was actually created originally for if that island's grave in burlington but they weren't able to raise the money to successfully put it on top of that massive column that was constructed so i've ended up on the portico of the state house and later on another sculptor would create another statue one that would end up at the top of the column and as soon as you go through those massive doors you see the main lobby with this magnificent boss also by born sculptor lark and me in fact it is a study of abraham lincoln that was done as in preparation for meads greatest work the  statue of lincoln on the president's tomb in springfield illinois the state of vermont knowing that larkin mead was their native son he spent most of his adult life in florence italy as an expatriate american artist like many others and when he died in nineteen ten his widow was so moved by a letter of condolence from the state of vermont and joint resolution passed by the legislature that she bestowed this bust on the state and it was sent across the ocean from florence to take its place in the main lobby of the state house we intend to and we're about to back contract out very sharply to clean the this magnificent piece of one of our crowning jewels of the state house collection these are the steam screens that were kept cast in new york city for the state house to hide the steam radiators found throughout the building and they are themselves works of art cast various center of the state house is the largest and most impressive chamber in the building the house of representatives representatives hall is what we call and it's a magnificent shaped chamber with all of its original furniture minus one hundred desks and chairs that yes were taken out after reapportionment and more impressive than and it is a treasure above the rostrum is this wonderful painting of george washington it is a copy of gilbert stuart standing washington the one that hangs in the rhode island capitol and problems it is a portrait that was painted by a german born artist named george goss r chickenfeed falls massachusetts and in eight hundred thirty six he heard that they were building a new state house in montpelier and he decided to come up to montpelier and market his portrait since he figured that no capital was complete without a portrait like this of the rostrum the sun did not quite buy that argument and they deadlocked fifteen to fifteen over the question should we buy the portrait of george washington the tied vote for was broken by the lieutenant governor and i think that may have been a sign that it would be a rocky road for the next one hundred fifty years around this building whether it's controversial as to whether you should buy a picture of george washington or mount for your capital that was shapps smith by the way i'm sure you recognize the speaker of the house this is shop smith from the rear with his son on the opening day of the legislative session this is typical of what the legislative days looks like jam packed chambers for that exciting day when her mom lawmakers take their seats in group of people you would agree bought they are there in earnest doing the earnest business that has been dumped in this building for well over a hundred fifty years and when i think the they are sitting in the same chairs at the same gas printing march doing the same thing that's what makes a curator sing i tell them at the beginning of every session the they are my living breathing up stairs vestibule this is when the curator gets a little tense when there are too many people in the building to comfortably fit and there's you know doing all kinds of things to the session then danville where they decided enough was enough let's have one place where we go to sit as a lot of the slater's so they chose montpelier primarily because  its relatively central location but also the fact that it was in the wind to ski river valley which of course traverse the state from east to west thereby allowing people on the east or the west side of the green mountains to get to the capitol with relative ease and they built the first state house simple wooden meeting house type structure with a belfry on top roughly where the today's supreme court building now stands just down the hill from the present site within twenty years they needed a new state house because the unicamera legislature turned into a bi cameral legislature and they needed a building with two legislative chambers so happily instead of adding on to that old meeting house they built and then tiredly new structure just up the hill blasted away at the hillside to create a building site above the rest of the town and finished it off in the classic police chase greek and roman athens and combined with the lowes saucer shaped roman dome this would be the state house for twenty years and it was designed by the renowned architect originally from love of the new hampshire of eventually burlington and the young and then the young's buildings still stand around burlington the wheeler house on the u b on campus vermont and this building coupled with one that he finished only a year or two later as a customs house in boston really launched and the young career and the eventually be supervising architect of the united states treasury which meant that he was responsible for overseeing the building of customs houses and post offices throughout the land  that is a photograph isn't that a wonderful photograph that's one of only two known photographs of the second stage they were ever taken they're both owned by the vermont historical society and that last one by the way has come to light only within the last i think it was maybe fifteen years ago when they acquired that image nobody had seen it before this image comes from a fire insurance company annual report and that this on this catastrophic fire broke out on a cold january night in eighteen fifty seven so it lasted only twenty years before the fire destroyed it the granite walls of course are from bury this is in the days before the railroads actually were bil bought everything within the state aisles and including the doll was made entirely of wood so everything was lost for the most part they were left with a ruin a group of guys lifted this painting frame and all from the front of the house chamber and carried it out of the burning state house thus rescuing it and happily it was rehung and then exactly the same location in the new house and thomas still away designed a state house that had the same spatial relationships within the building that the proof that i am a young had to have only he and large the state house as long as they had to replace it and they finished it off in the style that had become popular by the late eighteenth fifties known as the renaissance revival so now instead of going back to agent grease and wrong we're going back to the italian renaissance and up on top of the statue he has a statue of freedom eventually the statue would actually be an allegorical figure of agriculture sometimes known as ceres who was the roman goddess these are thomas always act all designs for him the new state house that was to be bill and it was completed in eight hundred fifty nine this is one of the earliest known images taken ob the state house this old photograph taken probably in the early eight hundred sixty s remember the state also finished and eight hundred fifty nine were only two years away from the civil war so this is very much a building of the civil war period and during that war this image was a couple things of change it looks pretty much this way however that hillside is typical of the landscape throughout vermont in the middle of the nineteenth century when eighty percent of the state was clear of land today it's exactly the reverse but look at that roof does that look like a golden dome to you or can't tell what color it is but it sure looks awfully dark to register as a gold dome indeed it was not  dome it was a red dome because they were conscious of wanting the dome and the roof in general to look as though it was made of red tile just as you would find in renaissance italy so remember it's all about renaissance italy now off to the left of this image or off to the right of this image is an interesting structure and what do you think that would be used for a lightning rod so i've heard all of these before said sit somebody else said something signaling well it's a working structure has those interesting you know way of supporting itself the vermont historical society staff they have tons of images of the state house showing this structure and i was serving the first day i think when i was a research assistant i think i vaguely remember going up to the library and saying what is this and for the next twenty some years nobody could answer this question for me ok and i'm not now i have to say this it was a very casual question it would only pop up whenever i saw the photograph and i would say oh yeah what is that nobody has still come up with a very clear answer so no no the very next shot is a photograph i believe that i purchased on e bay not too long ago and it answered the question definitively that is a flag pole so who said flag pole who's the person who said the flag pole you get bonus points whoever you are you're and credibly percept that this is the flag this is the flag pole so we've pulled back we're up on a big hillside overlooking montpelier now quite a bit further away from the state house so you can get your perspective here and this is a magnificent image actually we what this is the possibility of building so i just want to do appreciate the scale here now that's not the current pavilion building so it is definitely shorter than the current building this is the catholic church in montpelier the original catholic church in montreal year before they built the one on bury street and this structure we estimate our best the this flagpole is over two hundred feet tall this is what you saw this half of the flagpole was in that other photograph alongside the first half ok so whenever it didn't have a flag on it which is when all the other photographs were taken this upper half was always down here so what somebody had to klein to this platform almost one hundred feet in the air pole the second half of the f pull up and place it in a holder on that platform vos doubling the height and doing that of course after they have taps this massive flag of the united states and most of our dating of these photographs seems to indicate that we thought they were in the eight hundred seventy s and we started thinking that maybe this was some way that they were celebrating the of the united states or what was going on we now believe all of those dates were incorrect and the this was done in the eight hundred sixty s and in fact howard cough and the civil war has story i'm has found corroborating evidence in periodicals that seem to indicate this is sort of a liberty pole and liberty paul's words used in the revolution and of the civil war as a way to send the troops off to bring the community together to keep the morale of the home front and the soldiers marching off to war high by having ceremonies at the base of these flag poles and that this was vermont's i'm still in the process of trying down to understand more fully how many structures like this there are in the united states and so far i'm not succeeded in finding anything quite like it it's an extraordinary thing that they had and it was all about vermont's response to the civil war it's really a great story ye you the portico is the original portico from the previous building everything else however was brand new so they had to demolish the remaining ruins of the state house because most of the of the wall walls were weakened and not able to be reused but they rebuilt that classically chase portico and that is the same portico that was on the previous building but that's the sole random of am a young state house that still remains today and there is a painting by james franklin gilman which is in our collection showing the red dome and the red roof with as j as gilman like to do kind of treating the city of montpelier as though it is some european capital were interiors as lavish as any in the eighteen fifties could be in the renaissance revival style so here is the governor's office with white ceiling so all of the colors in the state house originally were coming from the fabrics against an otherwise fairly classically chaste white background with ivory colored woodwork we know this because we did a lot of paint analysis to determine exactly what the original colors of the state house should be and today this is the way the governor's office looks we're up on a of a lift so i apologize for the angle this is not an angle that you would enjoy if you walked into the room but there's a replica of the original dash and all of the original furniture still there the vast was the one piece that we never found nobody knows quite what happened to your original got a desk but happily we found one almost identical to it in  crump and low in boston and we were able to purchase it for the governor's office of partners debts with drawers on both sides the house chamber these are old  stereopticon views notice that darkened rectangle over the rostrum that's george washington so it doesn't come out very well in a lot of the old shots of the chamber above of the great coat of arms of the state of vermont and the gas chandelier the scots as the desks the set tees they're all still there this is what you see as you enter the house chamber and happily it's all restored minus one hundred desks and cha no they were banks of desks you're right in many cases they were not quite the length of the current contours so when they took the hundred desks and chairs out they completely changed the configuration of those desks and they also recreated tops that are somewhat larger than the originals and in fact they they sold off of the extra desks and chairs and many of the other half on happily again this is from the early seventy's renovation of the state house and i regret to say those in fact i give my colleagues at the vermont historical society a little grief over this they sold off spittoons and all kinds of things that have been in the state house forever and ever to outfit the new museum for the vermont historical society that had just been tees they look like individual armchairs but they're actually one gigantic piece of furniture on either side of the rostrum where the senators cept when there's a joint session of both houses of the legislature they were done by james ellis of cambridge massachusetts and the blake and davenport company of boston pretty much supplied all of the furniture for the state house this is now the era we've just bantered really in the eight hundred fifty s the era when much of the furniture of course is now being made by machine so these little rock cocoa revivals sept tease and capitol in the house chamber all of the chambers on the second floor are the most elaborate of the orders with large capitals and small capitals  supporting the tablature and the galleries of the chambers we still maintain the original down chandelier and all of the original gaslights happily they looked more like gaslights again because like this but we did that during the restoration they're all aluminum a did today with compact fluorescent bulbs so we're even being a little conscious of energy efficiency the body guess if you know the rooms of the state house this is one of the grand rooms in the state house today but it no longer looks this way does anybody know what room this is and the desk here in cedar creek room if it does not you're quite right the staircase is gone the gallery is gone the bookcases and books are gone this was the state library happened how we got there ok this is the governor's office in the eight hundred eighty s so the state house went through a major redecoration in the eight hundred eighty s when the cedar creek room was created so notice on the on the walls of the governor's office here we have very elaborate stencils dark earth tone colors on the walls and the ceiling as well gilded with copper and gold leaf this is the gilded age look of the late nineteenth century and it would sweep its way through the whole state house so notice how that governor's office with those white walls has been transformed with the same furniture some of the some different pieces in the rear but by and large it's the same room but with a very different look about it and that same thing happened to the cedar creek room where which is now the only major chamber in the building that we've restored to this later period of the eighteen eighties and nineties with daf chandelier carpets and drapes of that period as well as the elaborate paint scheme the greek slave who is a fairly notorious lamp of the state as you may  remember and she was created of course as a piece of art by the famous sculptor of hiram powers of woodstock vermont and she found her way on to the lighting great slaves that still reside on the house chandelier even the downstairs rooms were eventually tackled including the auditors office this is state auditors are doing  handley sitting in the big overstuffed black leather chair and here you can see again transitional lighting fixtures the upper arms reaching up  are of the gas rather and the arms pointing downward are the electric we even have a hose connected to the gas fixtures to it that goes down to a slave in the governor's office every summer we don't do it when the governor is in residence because it's kind of a hazard to have that pose coming down and we don't want anything i'm fortunate that happened so i rebooked it to his chandelier every spring when we're ready to start with the tourists this is the house agriculture committee s  room so you can see that they have copies of those transitional downs selectric chandelier is from the eight hundred ninety s the were in the state as these were made by the way by over here many fossils that can be found in the state house floor schoolchildren that's one of their happiest pleasures is to run around and see the fossils in the floor of the tassels on the drapes the original silvered number plates on the fall false grained doors made of pine but they wanted them to look like mahogany so they they painted the graining on them to imitate the look of this is a great shot i love the shot for the book because this this is what the building is all about right these are the bill that are introduced in a we also have this the old supreme court chamber down on the first floor in the eighteen eighties they built a wing off to the west of the state house and this was the first home for vermont supreme court these are the original justices armchairs we have all five of them only two of them have been really a pollster in new black leather with their horse hair overstuffed design they were such a challenge to the upholsterer that he have a nervous breakdown and we haven't been able to get the other three really upholstered never sent some side decided to go easy on them and i've i've i'm waiting for the opportunity to return to the rouse but it may be another and the justices had their backs to the fireplace facing the rest of the court room this room today is used as a private lounge for legislators to escape  others in the building they have access to computers and telephones as you probably know vermont legislators have no office the they only enjoy the desks in the chambers and there are committee parents he was born in a house directly across the street from the state house and this seventeen now is in the lieutenant governor's office wonderful  cases of course in the renaissance revival style another gas chandelier juxtaposed with that right outside the other major legislative chamber this is the  sun which gives you the illusion that you're in an old chamber but it's actually just because it has of the look tickles ceiling over have the room is actually of the shape of a d just as the house chamber is but this room instead of enjoying the bright red and gold carpets and drapes of the bigger chamber has always had a green color scheme and we had quite a struggle  about ten years ago when we announced our intention to put a replica of the original carpet in this chamber it had always enjoyed in the last thirty forty years  solid green rod and the carpet pattern was quite the talk of the state house for a while i was accused of bringing the board dello look  listening to barbra streisand saying walk through a storm hold your head up high tears running down my cheeks it was a tough time  we got through it we pushed through and now there isn't a soul in the senate who will tell you that they ever have any doubts about this car but it's universally loved at the pl well we walk into the chamber a little deeper these are all original furniture with the exception of those computer terminals that you see up there in the fro and the ceiling itself all of the ceilings of the major chambers on the second floor of the state house are cast plaster ceilings these are made of nothing but plaster there's molded and then applied to the ceilings this is rory brennan who has been a plaster conservator for the state house for the last twenty five years we have done a great deal of work on the plaster to make sure it's to the ceiling of the state house this is rory touching again cast plaster elements that have now been guilty of that are around the stained glass style lights in the cedar creek room and they too have been very much a part of his the work of the state house but it's a working building so guess who comes to the state house every december to reapply another coat of sherlock on the bus and to try to get rid of all of the imperfections the heavy use from january may tends to take a toll on these furnishings the debts the chair everything goes over one hundred fifty years old and these people are still sitting in the same de with the same chairs in fact you know and we joke about these chairs they are so uncomfortable that they are what is standing between os and that's what's preserved our part time citizen legislature and it's that's the way we want it right now lots of portraits around the building of course we have a portrait of virtually every governor of highland hall his portrait hangs in the governor's office of self and but we have all kinds of portraits we have little lithographs of governors we have little charcoals we have the more recent portraits is madeline human of course a very large portrait done by jan cooke mack who used to live in bennington and now the us i don't believe lives in vermont anymore but she's portrayed with the traditional elements this is a very contemporary portrait but notice that she has all the traditional elements of a lot of other portraits george washington for example the drapery the window the ground the chair that is the constitution chair which all governors of vermont have used since the state house was built it's actually carved out of timbers the came out in the seat of power she's making the statement women have arrived they are sitting in the seat of power it's a very important moment for the state house because we have eighty five dollars portraits i think in the building and three portraits in the building are women one of course only one of course is a woman governor above the other two governor's state house office and they're paid for privately so the governor of puerto it's i have to do the best i can to make sure there are of the qualities that we demand for the state of the same time i don't have a lot of power because of course they're paid for privately by the governor and his or her admirers but it's a great state house one that i love after thirty four years of being around them and i hope that you feel that it is not just a great building block of building that belongs to you interesting and i'm a i'm first of all lot of people are surprised that the entire drive home is made of wood it is it doesn't want you to think that it's made out of wood so they painted the drum portion with sand to imitate the look of granite and then of course the upper portion was she'd been copper or as we noted earlier it was painted red throughout the nineteenth century in nineteen  it was live for the first time and for every thirty years or so it has to be rebuilt because gold leaf does wear off over time and we're getting to the point right about now of needing to rebuild the don't mind i'm kind of waiting for the recovery to take hold here and for i remain buildings to be restored before i dare to go before the legislature and suggest that they rebuilt the dock and it's going to be pricey we're still looking into that the big cost is not so much the cost of the gold which you know is about a brick this big when you bring it down to something like that that would be all the gold leaf that would cover the dong but the labor certainly is intense i think we can all agree risk management will be involved in determining how much insurance of other kinds of concerns have to be built into the project if it has the one hundred fifty plus y copper still there so we have a bunch of leaks that's our problem lots of leaks we're always going up here plugging the latest leak so i think we're look at that possibly needing to replace some of the copper in addition to rebuilding so we're we're trying to get the whole project in focus and you'll be hearing more about this i'm sure as time goes on down in the basement of the state down in the basement of the state alpheus where the first indoor plumbing facilities provided for the legislature and of course back then there were no women legislature and so there was no need for a similar room for the ladies so we have not only that long bank of sinks and all of these open door marble partitions stalls but one of the i'm sure the ladies have no idea what those are and what they're used for the man you'll have to fill them in later anyway that's the state house that we've had for well over one hundred fifty years happily i think with your care and your love and attention we'll hope to have another hundred fifty thank you constitutional convention that was to take place the next day needless to say it was postponed and so they were heating the building no one was in the building they were simply getting the building warm for the following day now remember january topps means legislative session but back than that was not in the legislature that would be a crazy time with all the snow you know to try to get t would be a nightmare so legislative sessions back then were right after the harvest was brought in and they are heard usually in late october or through the month of november but hopefully before the snow fall so it was an unusual occurrence and unfortunately those who he did the building were not paying attention and they are over zealous least the furnace  heat into the building from that separate the solar year they also used a lot of cast iron and masonry in rebuilding the buildings so rather than the framed building of the of the earlier  there are many different versions of vermont coat of arms it's actually not the state seal the state seal is painted portion in the middle which is the cow on the pine tree the seeds of wheat and the seal is actually reserved for the use of a governor for the most part the coat of arms was created in the middle of the nineteenth century with the stag's head and other heraldry this is kind of funny version of it and here or no this is the state house was well cared for and then facts you know i say that the there was a backlash what they did to the state house was they were simply trying updating it they didn't do a very sensitive job so box ninety five percent of the original furniture is still there they simply covered it with brown no high in the seventy's you know not to hide was the fabric of choice back then i guess the big did a lot of insensitive things and they were relatively easy to i'm do you know why it happened simply because we're aware it's ironic that it happened because here they were rebuilding the pavilion building to look just like that old hotel on the outside and yet use it as a modern office building on the inside and that was one of the great preservation battles in montpelier in the late one nine hundred sixty s and early seventy's so in the wake of that it is kind of strange that the state house was not treated with the sensitivity that it should have been it was well cared for but incrementally over time we're always going to get rid of the drapes and upholstery and carpets that no longer reflect the time when the state house was built right that's inevitable because it's a search changing and with tastes changing buildings change in up to forty so bringing back a building to its original period that restoration is really about simply bringing back the integrity of the building to the extent that you need to and preservation is all about case by case instances when you're talking about the state house the this is important as this we felt bringing it all the way back was very important and with one hundred fifty thousand visitors every year we you know we have an audience and we need to present it as something kind of special other buildings wouldn't be held to that standard and if you don't have the evidence on which to act for him rest in restoring don't go because you catch really do the gaps work you have to know exactly what you're restoring and what it looks like if you don't have the evidence stacked upon them it's probably better just to do something else so it's a hard it's a hard question but  vermont as usual was not exactly in the forefront of the historic preservation movement we were a little late in the setup of the through response to some of the things that were going well it's like  you know when i came thirty four years ago people consider the cell of tearing a building that was used by the legislature and they weren't willing to acknowledge that maybe it was also a museum that it was  mindset change slowly over time and today as i said you find very few people who wouldn't their knowledge but that's another function of this building on the two together are really what makes it