A State House exhibit got us thinking: What do people think about ‘the people’s house’?

A photo collage shows details from the Rhode Island State House during the 2024 legislative session. Among the items included are the Independent Man, a marble chunk in the 120th anniversary exhibit, a lamp, various staircases, a TV in the House gallery, library shelves, a committee hearing room, and a box labeled ‘Christmas stuff’ in the library closet. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)

You could walk by a new exhibit installed in the Rhode Island State House and not notice it. 

But its subject matter — the State House itself — looms over Smith Hill in Providence and is hard to miss.

Secretary of State Gregg Amore, the Rhode Island State Archives and the Snowtown Project collaborated on the exhibit that now occupies the basement of the building whose 120th birthday it commemorates. The presentation is mostly informational text and archival images printed on hanging banners. In a parallel hallway with even dimmer lighting, an older, reused presentation on the building’s history transpires over a series of standing wooden boards. 

The modest display points to some depths in the building’s story. A bit of background: In the 19th century, the Smith Hill spot was occupied by Snowtown, a low-income, mixed-race neighborhood “where people who didn’t fit in elsewhere, including migrants and immigrants, settled to try to make a life for themselves,” wrote Traci Picard, co-leader of the Snowtown Research Team via email. 

“It was home for people, the same way that our neighborhoods are home to us today,” Picard said. 

Snowtown was ultimately pushed out by urban developments like the railroad and the State House. In the new exhibit, a lightly scuffed display case contains a piece of the material that would usurp the working class neighborhood: A chunk of Georgia marble. 

The exhibit, which will be on view through at least fall, prompted Rhode Island Current to reach out to folks who visit the State House to hear what they think about the place.

Open to the public — but only at one entrance 

The Renaissance-styled State House is an unmissable memento of Rhode Island’s old money, built when the state was among the richest in the union. The grandeur might make people feel unsure if they belong there. Lane Sparkman, secretary of the State House Restoration Committee and formerly of the Secretary of State’s Office, said the lawn on the building’s south side is commonly a point of confusion.

“There’s all this green space, and people have sort of anxiety about, ‘Can I be on that green space or not?’” said Sparkman. “You know, some people are using it for volleyball on a regular basis, and other people think, ‘Oh, gosh, am I allowed to have a picnic there?’”

The State House “is in fact totally accessible to the public,” Sparkman said. “It’s just the public doesn’t know it.”

A 2022 campaign called My State House led by the Restoration Committee invited both professional creatives and regular citizens to reimagine the State House. Community maps were a major part of this campaign which Sparkman worked on. Some people indulged wild ideas like amusement parks on the grounds, while others made practical recommendations about increasing access for people with disabilities.

As respondents drew their ideal campuses, they could also fill in an answer: “Have you ever been to the State House?”

“No,” wrote a 27-year-old respondent, citing “No reason + it seems illegal.”

But a half dozen professional designers — challenged to create and then be judged on radical-but-plausible scenarios of change for the building — offered the harshest rebukes. Design rationales called the State House “authoritative and aloof,” an “imposing” occupant of Native land, and “an outdated symbol of power and hierarchy.”

Secretary of State Amore considers the State House as “the people’s house.”

“All Rhode Islanders and visitors alike should feel welcome and comfortable,” said Amore’s spokesperson Faith Chybowski. “Our civic education initiatives play a key role in making individuals feel comfortable and excited to visit.”

As part of that effort, Amore has been exploring Saturday open hours, like on May 4, Rhode Island Independence Day, when the State House welcomed people to see the Independent Man. The gold-plated statue usually adorns the top of the State House’s dome as a kind of architectural cake topper, but for now it resides in the State House entrance while its perch is being repaired.

Sparkman also thinks being open on Saturday is an easy, simple way to increase the building’s accessibility. Handicapped entrances remain an issue, she said — as does the fact that the entrance on Gaspee Street is closed to the public year-round.

“It was designed to have two functional entrances,” Sparkman said. Opening the Gaspee Street entrance would mean having to set up another security system and metal detector.

These are a few of my favorite rooms

Another entryway into the State House: Memory. 

When Rep. Rebecca Kislak thinks about the State House, she remembers watching the 2007 movie “Underdog” with her children. 

“I think I would have loved our beautiful dome anyway,” Kislak, a Providence Democrat, recalled, “but I also hear the wonder of my formerly little kids remembering the dogs flying around the dome in a critical scene in the movie.” 

It wasn’t just any dome around which canines soared in the filmed adaption of the ’70s Saturday morning cartoon: The State House’s Georgia marble dome, the physical apex of the smallest state’s government, supplied the movie’s climactic mise-en-scène. 

The State House was designed to project a monumental image and it may have succeeded: Rep. Jennifer Stewart, a Pawtucket Democrat, told Rhode Island Current her favorite room is the library for its immediate sense of “gravitas.” Most people interviewed for this article, in fact, singled out the library as a favorite room. (It’s also where Sparkman had her desk when she worked with the Secretary of State’s office.)

Stewart had an “idiosyncratic” pick for the best part of the State House: the walk from the parking lot to the House floor. The entrance for legislators and staff connects the exterior parking lot to the building’s basement, which then leads to another stairwell that goes to the first floor. 

“I almost always take the stairs to the chamber and from the chamber to my car,” Stewart said. “And I love that walk because very few people tend to take the stairs. It’s a way of easing into the building, and all of the activity and the people that are part of the House floor…It’s a way that I can think about what’s ahead [and] center myself as someone who tends to be a little more introverted.”

Sparkman thought the legislator entrance “doesn’t really make you feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve arrived.’” 

But Rep. June Speakman, a Warren Democrat, agreed with Stewart. Having won her House seat in what she called “a very dramatic special election,” Speakman remembers entering the sub-basement on her way to be sworn in and becoming breathless at “those things that look like pyramids,” the building’s structural supports.

 Another “amazing” place for Speakman is the House chamber, where shadow is swapped for sunlight. She’s apt to look up sometimes at the translucent glass ceiling, and watch the light change with the sun. Speakman said she has been to Connecticut state buildings with superior acoustics, air conditioning and plenty of room for witnesses. But a building like that is not in her funding priorities.  

“I love our cozy little home,” Speakman said. 

Going for all the marble

The new exhibit summarizes and visualizes the State House’s construction, but it does not include some of the pettiness that went into its making. 

Defeating Minnesota: That was the goal of Gov. Herbert Warren Ladd and state planners as they envisioned the dome atop the General Assembly’s new home. The younger midwestern state was in the process of adding its own marble dome to its Capitol in St. Paul. Ladd, a former dry goods merchant, was Rhode Island’s governor twice — but he never won an election and was assigned the post by the Legislature each time. He even ponied up some of his own funds to make the State House as magnificent as possible with a contest to design the State House. 

But the contest may have been as much a fait accompli as Ladd’s governorship. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology master’s thesis on the State House’s creation found “basically no statements” from anyone but Ladd himself in support of “a new monumental image” for the state — something definitely conveyed by the 50-foot diameter marble dome atop the State House. Frequently cited in state materials is the stat that Rhode Island’s marble dome is the fourth-largest self-supported in the world. Alas, the dome of the Minnesota Capitol, completed in 1905, measures 60 feet.

Ladd wanted monumentality, but he was open to different flavors of scale and drama. Architects floated ideas that were Spanish, Victorian Gothic or Romanesque in flavor, but the spoils of victory went to architectural trio McKim, Mead and White and their Italian Renaissance-indebted design.  

Democratic Reps. Enrique Sanchez and Jennifer Stewart chat on the House floor on May 28, 2024. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)

Brilliant and bright

Rocks can be harder to personify than plants or animals, so you might see how the massive Georgia marble complex comes off as stuffy to some observers. But not to Jerome G. Daneker, who wrote a book on the subject of this “matchless white stone” in 1927.  

“It is difficult to believe that such active, dominant and cheerful lights can live in solid marble,” Daenker wrote in “The Romance of Georgia Marble.” 

It’s easier to believe if you visit the State House during what photographers call “golden hour,” or the last surge of light before sunset. When the sun drops in the sky, its light becomes diffuse, red and indirect. Objects gain halos, and their outlines might be traced in light. On the third floor, sunbeams flood the hallways, and reduce shapes to silhouettes. 

You may wonder how state workers keep that marble brilliant and bright. As far as the inside of the building goes, there’s nothing special to it: The State House interior is cleaned with a damp mop and wiped down with water alone, said Christina O’Reilly, a spokesperson for the Department of Administration, in an email. 

Less frequent deeper cleanings use a scrubbing machine with a mild detergent called Wavelength. The outside, O’Reilly said, has been getting a much more involved cleaning since 2023 that consists of unclogging mortar joints, several kinds of steam cleaning and spot solutions for stains and discoloration.

Rather than spot removal, some respondents to the 2022 My State House project imagined such State House improvements like vegetable gardens and performance stages. A 74-year-old named Barbara noted practical things, like confusion over where to enter the building, or the parking lot she determined to be “ugly.” 

Barbara said she visited the building “a long time ago.” But since the State House is located directly across from Providence’s only train station, Barbara appreciates it as a familiar sight: “Love when I get off the commuter rail at night. It’s the first thing I see.”

Just like Gov. Ladd intended, the State House makes a statement. 

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