Скачать или смотреть Iowa: Des Moines, Iowa State Capitol

The Iowa State Capitol, located in Des Moines, houses the Iowa Senate, Iowa House of Representatives, the Office of the Governor, and the Offices of the Attorney General, Auditor, Treasurer, and Secretary of State.

The building also includes a chamber for the Iowa Supreme Court, although court activities usually take place in the neighboring Iowa Supreme Court building.

The building was constructed between 1871 and 1886, and is the only five-domed capitol in the country.

The architectural design of the Capitol, rectangular in form, with great windows and high ceilings, follows the traditional pattern of 19th-century planning for public buildings. A modified and refined Renaissance style gives the impression of strength and dignity combined with utility.

The commanding feature is the central towering dome constructed of iron and brick and covered with 23-carat gold.

The beauty, dignity, and arrangement of the interior become apparent as a visitor stands under the dome of the first floor. Broad, lofty corridors extend west, north, and south. Walls are highly decorated and the rooms and chambers of the capitol have a wide variety of Iowa wood as well as imported marble. Twenty-nine types of imported and domestic marble were used in the interior; and the wood used—walnut, cherry, catalpa, butternut, and oak—was nearly all from Iowa forests.

Around the rotunda on the frieze above the columns is the famous quotation from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "This nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Extending the full width of the east wall over the staircase is the great mural painting Westward, an idealized representation of the coming of the people who made Iowa. The painting was completed shortly after the start of the 20th century. Edwin H. Blashfield, the artist, wrote of it: "The main idea of the picture is a symbolical presentation of the Pioneers led by the spirits of Civilization and Enlightenment to the conquest by cultivation of the Great West."