CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said Henry C. Brown was married to Molly Brown. This is incorrect.
This week, we’re taking high up over Colorado. Today a place that almost everyone has seen -- but you’ve probably never see it like this.
We’re taking you inside the State Capitol Golden Dome, which is actually two domes. There’s an inside and outside dome, with a space in between.
We asked State Spokesman Doug Platt to take us up into the space. The first stop was Mr. Brown’s attic. It’s the area tucked under the roofline, between the building and dome tower.
It’s a museum named after developer Henry C. Brown. He donated the land where the Capitol was built. The museum is full of pictures of the construction of the building, and there’s an original design on display. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it includes a statue on top of the dome of a woman who happens to be shirtless.
Yup.
PREVIOUS STORY: Over Colorado: A look at Niwot Ridge
She never made it into the final plans, maybe because she was partially naked?
From there, it’s up to the observation deck that is open for public tours. There’s a great view, and as Doug Platt pointed out, by law, no one can build anything that will interrupt that view of the mountains from the Capitol building.
That’s as high as the public can go during a tour, but we kept climbing up the very steep, spiral staircase. That’s when we started to see the separation between the inner and outer dome. It’s a dark space full of iron beams and wires. It’s fascinating to see how the two domes were constructed, in a design much like the famous Duomo in Florence, Italy.
After climbing up out of the dark, you finally get to the area they call the attic.
It’s the inside of the inner dome, where you can see history on display. The dome has been gilded with gold leaf four times since it was built in 1894, and the gilders all put their names up in the attic.
Platt says since they truly were artists, it’s just like signing their work. There’s also a very old bosun’s chair in the attic.
The gilders used to hang the chair out the windows and sit in it to do their work on the gold dome. This was one was signed by gilder Bill May back in 1919.
From the attic, you start climbing to the next level, called the lantern. It’s the fixture that sits on top of the dome, and has windows in all directions. They actually open, and back in the day were used to help heat the building. When open they pulled the warm air up, much like a chimney on a fireplace. Again, the views from there are spectacular.
The final stop was a place hardly anyone gets to see.
It’s called the globe, and it’s on the very top of the building, where the shirtless woman from the original design was going to be. You get up there up a steep ladder. And since it’s too small for anyone over 10 years old, we had to settle for sending a GoPro into it.
It’s a rare view from a place that’s as high up as you can get in Colorado Government, so to speak. The very toppy-top of our State Capitol, towering 25 floors above Colorado.
