Madison times. (Tallulah, Madison Parish, La.) 1884-1???, 1885-01-31
THE N. ". STATE CAPITAL.
Something About the Most Expensive
Ed,ace ON Our Continent.

The state capitol building is the most
expensive edifce on this continent,
having now cost approaching SIG, 100000
The capitol at Washington was summed
up ten years ago to have cost about
$l3,OOO,OOO, and since that time nothing
has been added except the improvement
of the capitol grounds. The superin-
tendent at Albany tod me that he
thought he could finish the capitol if he
had So, 100000 voted into one lump. Some
sceptics there say that the capitol will
take S10,OOO,O00 more. If it is to be fin
ished with the tower, l SHOULD think il
would cost nearer $25,0O0,0O0 than $20,'
100000. While the Albany capitol has
great depth it is in its longest part hardly
the length of the national capitol. A
good deal of the latter edifice is merely
curtain or screen to connect the wing;
with the old center. The Albany CAPT
tol has three great stories mounted upon
a great basement, and above the ccrnice
are pavilions, themselves as high as or
binary business blocks in New York.
The architecture of the capitol has man.
testify changed, and beginning with
hard and massive Renaissance rusticated
it seeks in the higher stories to get into
Gothic, Eastern and Moorish forms, go
that it may be likened to stone flower
pot with the flowers popping out above
1t iS impossible not 10 admire such
magnificent mass of stone. Nearly ev-
erybody likes the latest additions the
best. We have had so much Roman
Renaissance put up in this country in
the past fifteen years that it has become
monotonOus. One of the architects OF
the Albany capitol was given the old
court house of New York city 10 extend,
and with complete Indifference to what
had been already done he put his Orien-
tai architecture upon the classical body
of the building. Yet saw prominent
architect not long ago reading book Of
essays on architectures by this same
man, and he said: Here is the best
writing l have ever seen in America by
an architect"
The state of New York has reached in
the new capitol at Albany the highest
monumentalizing of a province known
in modern or perhaps feudal times. l
can think of no public building in the
old ducal sovereignties of Europe which
approaches in any way the proportions
and expense of this capitol of a mere
state. Neither the American congress
nor parliament nor any law-making body
on the globe has such surroundings as
the senate and assembly of the province
of New York. One architect took the
assembly in hand, and another, to use
the words of Artemus Ward, "pu. soul"
into the senate. A fine foreign critic on
such matters would express the same
astonishment entering these two cham
bers that the official classes of England
do at the magnitude of the Federal print
ing. When Mr.. Hendricks was at
Albany week or two ago, he exclaimed
that he had seen nothing in Europe like
this capitol, and he MAJ live many
hundred years in America before he will
see Anything like it. The world seems
to have been ransacked for building
material.
The assembly sits under roof that
would make old William Rufus pale
with envy. There are great fire-places
in these chambers which seem designed
in some distant future to be the tombs
of great governors. The paintings in
the assembly chamber are about 100
years ahead of American appreciation,
and as art is forever moving along, they
will perhaps be 200 behind it when the
proper generation catches up. The very
subjects indicated seem to show that the
artist, like the architects, was working
for the encomiums of posterity. This
pupil of Courture's is of honest Republi-
can descent, and the "Flight Of Night"
and the "Discoverer" might have been
Couture's own inspiration. The Gothic
stairway of one architect is now being
thrown into mere democracy by the
stairway of his competitor, which is for
the present half covered with scaffold-
ing.
Ifpeople are inquisitive about the high
price of furniture. they can understand
it by looking into the Albany state house.
The architects have furniture factory
right in the capitol, for they would be
ashamed to have "store furniture" put
under their magnificent embossed ceiling
and against their beautiful leather walls;
hence every chair is designed for par
ticular room, and mahogany is preferred
above all thing, with walnut at dis.
count, though now and then some oak
or ash is allowed to come in. You can
see clocks there twenty feet high, look
ing like Gothic towers taken from old
palaces-so big, indeed, that if you put
your ear to the case you can hardly be-
lieve the clock is going, as the dimen.
sions almost exhaust the carrying power
OF sound. In some Of the fireplaoes the
carving is so minute that the workman
will be a month at a good fat price q
day executing few square feet of it
Marbles are brought hers from Siena
because they have a certain flesh tint OF
yellow tint which will set off the brass
properly. The wooden panels are made
tn receive paintings or symbols in gilt
As you 90 from room to room, each one
putting royalty back in the cradle, You
are hardly surprised to hear that the
officials are jealous of each other on the
question of room, and that man with a
chamber only 100 feet square is not on
speaking terms with another officer
who has chamber l25 feet square.