Visit CS2  |  June 2008

A guide for the CAD industry...
CADworld

 Did It Already Hit 100?

Hitting 100 degrees in May does not bode well for August. My guys in the warehouse are really suffering. They really hate the long sleeve shirts I ordered … few months late, huh!?

For years we have enjoyed the truly generous support of our clients. We would like to try and give back some of that support. Mike Collins, Doug St. Onge, and myself are looking to join the various professional organizations in our industry. We do this not just to be members, but to actively participate and, hopefully, contribute.

I bring this up for several reasons. If you see one of my people there, please feel free to volunteer them early and often. I am guessing many of you are active in fine organizations. Please shoot me an email regarding when and where you meet along with any contact information.

We are finally beyond the daily struggle for survival. Now it is time to give a little back to our community. We’ll see you out there.

J Christopher Epstein
President

Behind the Doors at the Capitol Building

Paul Burka describes some of the "behind the locked doors" sights to see at the Capitol Building in a recent Texas Monthly article. They are worth recounting to make your next visit a more exciting event!

Originally erected in the 1880's to inspire the people''s representatives to be worthy of their workplace, the Capitol is our grandest public building. Its pink granite exterior is rough and uneven and unyielding, like Texas itself, and its exterior was meticulously restored a decade ago to it early twentieth-century appearance.

There is a 45 minute guided tour that is offered all day on weekdays, with a shortened schedule on Saturday and Sunday. But the tour is only the beginning. Paul gives us a sense of what is not seen. The tour ends underground, in the extension, at the open-air rotunda that rises to ground level. It is nicknamed the "shark tank," so called because cell phone reception is dead everywhere else in the extension. While committee meetings are taking place in the many conference rooms, this small rotunda is crowded with lobbyists trying to transact business with their clients.

Today's visitors can dine in a cafeteria in the extension, but before it existed, the only sustenance other than vending machines was a small snack bar. In those days, lobbyists took favored lawmakers off the Capitol grounds to private clubs during the lunch recess, while the Capitol personnel had to endure microwave hot dogs and canned soups at the snack bar, whose nickname, inspired by the flooring, was the Linoleum Club. Its Formica tables and plastic chairs are memorialized in a sketch that is in possession of the head of the tour service.

Let's head up: The Dome. The Dome is such a focal point of the Capitol at all levels. The fourth floor is the highest level most people are allowed to access, and gives you the closest view of the inner dome. Actually, there are two domes, inner dome and outer. The inner dome holds the Texas star, situated 218 feet above the rotunda; the outer, much higher, is what you see from the street. Several more staircases must be negotiated to reach the "lantern", a slender, columned cupola that caps the dome. It has a narrow exterior walkway that circles it.

Before you leave the fourth floor, walk over to the atrium, (Did you know there was an atrium?) in the north hallway. On a sunny day, look up at the skylight for shimmering streaks of blue light. These are cast by 24 glass windows; know as oculi, with a white snowflake light pattern. You can see a couple of them through a large bauble hanging from the ceiling. Why the architect chose to put these gorgeous cobalt windows in a place where no one can see their full effect is one of the mysteries of the Capitol.

On the second floor, you will find the Legislative Reference Library. Look for an interesting piece in the northwest corner, an old wooden chair with one long arm. It was once used by Santa Anna during the Texas Revolution. Two more rooms on the second floor are open to the public. The most interesting is the Lieutenant Governor's Reception room, known informally as the Great Room. In this room, a section of the modern wall has been removed to reveal, through glass, a segment of the original unplastered interior limestone wall. Some of the original furnishings in the Great Room were destroyed in a 1983 fire that started in the lieutenant governor's apartment (the entire building could have been lost, as was the previous capitol in 1881.) The Great Room has some of the best art pieces in the whole building.

As you walk the halls you'll notice that the architects found all kind of ways to work Texas motifs throughout the design: Lone Stars in the dome, on the walls, in the floors and windows; the outlines of the state map, even the state's name in letters formed by light bulbs in chandeliers high above the House and Senate chambers, and etched in the door hinges. So coveted are those hinges by souvenir seekers that the state preservation board had to replace flathead screws with two-holed screws that require a special tool to extract them.

Most of the major features—the rotunda, the life-size statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, the words and symbols in the terrazzo floor—are all on the regular tour. There is a little known plaque in a nook behind the staircase leading to the Senate lobby. It is titled, "Children of the Confederacy Creed". The words on this plaque reflect the real ideals of a state congress. Check it out and see if you think our state legislators are echoed in these words.

This is the end of my words, so that you can begin your tour of our Texas heritage in a building that has captured that history for 119 years. Shows that age can be complimentary in some cases!