Madison's Capital Building (took a tour)

While in Madison, I stopped by the capital building, which I had some pics of in a previous post I think. Designed by the same architect as the NYSE, this thing's amazing from the outside and is even more impressive inside. So they built this thing 3 times. The first version was just crappy, the second one burnt down (they had fire extinguishing equipment that was conveniently being serviced at the time of the fire), and now the present one stands.
One of the most impressive things about this building is the amount and origin of the stone. They even have some fossils nicely exposed in the stairs and supreme courtroom walls. The main dome is granite (the first of its kind), white bethel granite from Vermont is used for many columns, the flooring is Italian marble, the green columns are Algerian green granite

All of the gold that you see is actual gold leaf and not paint.

Me in front of the Madison capitol building at night.

In the state senate chamber is a large mural painted on the back wall, it contains all of your basic allegories, beautiful women pointing to wealth, farmers, miners and other tradesmen symbolizing prosperity and resource wealth, soldiers symbolizing those who held glory and made sacrifice. In the late 90s the entire building went through a 14-year restoration including this painting. A known 'mistake' in the painting was better revealed after that.

After the artist had completed it, he was told that since Wisconsin in the badger state, the painting would not hold credence without a badger being painted in. So the painter removed one of the four soldiers and painted in a badger. After the restoration, the missing soldier's head became more clear above the badger, as a ghostly image where you could make out ears, eyes, and cap. Their very own ghost story!

This same chamber was the first in the nation to have electronic voting. The representatives had buttons on their consoles to vote Yea or Nay, and s button to call an assistant page as well.

Madison has a cool tradition where an orchestra plays music on the capitol steps on Wednesday and everyone camps out on the grass to listen. Unfortunately I wasn't staying till Wednesday so I missed out on this.