The Old State House

Not surprising that “the most finely-proportioned rooms in all America” would be in Connecticut as many say that about the young ladies from Connecticut as well.

Once ran across, quite by accident, a lady of mature years who grew up in a house (actually 2) Charles Bullfinch designed on Beacon Hill. Both homes had the occasional lavender pane in the windows. I asked her what it was like to grow up looking through lavendar-colored panes. She replied, “I didn’t know people in the Midwest knew about such things.”

Finely proportioned rooms are a good thing, and so are finely proportioned exteriors.

I would submit that the exterior elevation is awkward and unsuccessful. The ground floor is too high and the first floor too short in comparison. Perhaps reversing the ceiling heights of those two floors would achieve the effect of better grounding the structure and bringing the uneasiness in to harmony.

Additionally the portico is problematic. Firstly, due to the above considerations, it is perched to high. Secondly, the column spacing is too wide, and perhaps the diameter of the columns is too narrow. These considerations also contribute to the sense of uneasiness for me. It’s as if the whole structure is alternately looming and lunging.

Those are marvelous rooms, Andrew. Thanks for posting them. The Old Senate Chamber in Bulfinch’s Massachusetts State House is a well-design room as well.

1969,

I beg to differ a bit re the exterior. The cars in the photo obscure the windows of the basement. When you see the basement, the ground floor look less leggy.

Re the portico, it’s worth remembering that Bulfinch drew the plans in 1792. The neoclassical taste of that moment was to elongate a lot of things, including columns, in a conscious departure from the received proportions of the classical orders. Maybe you just don’t like that approach to the proportions; I’ll confess that I do.

At any rate, there’s a very nice discussion of this building in Harold Kirker, The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch (1969), including a reconstruction of the State House as originally built and a drawing of the Liverpool Town Hall (1748-55), which seems to have been the primary model for the State House.

Andrew, I enjoy the fact that, for all Russell Kirk professed preferring gargoyles to neoclassical pediments, he did appreciate good neoclassical architecture, too.

My thanks for this fine Georgian interior. Until I visited your country, especially Philadelphia, I was unaware of the fine Georgian buildings that you had, and your blog has improved my education.

Andrew, Ron Paul’s wife called our house last night. For the life of us we cannot understand how she got our number. Did you put her up to it? Or is TNC selling info?

It was Mother Teresa who did it!

I just read about Mr. Paul’s tea party “re-enactment” in Boston. They tossed banners stating “no taxation without representation” into wooden boxes? They didn’t even throw the boxes of cough, cough banners into the Harbor. Where was the theft? Where was the hooliganism of the original tea party?

The only thing Ron Paul and his supporters re-enacted properly was the stupidity of the original tea party. The Boston Tea Party was at best a very stupid thing to do as it caused what little sympathy England had for the colonies to be wiped away and provoking the greatest military response to date.

Mr. Paul (and his supporters) should know that the statement “no taxation without representation” only applies these days to those individuals involved in the underground economy. Or illegals.

Revolutionaries tend to be idiots.

For an authentic re-enactment, Mr. Paul and his supporters needed to dress as Indians (Native American these days) as the original tea partiers did hope to conceal their identifications by blaming the indians.

And, they needed to throw their boxes into the Harbor thereby denting the ecosystem…

But I guess Mr. Paul figured the ticket and fines he would have received for polluting the Harbor would not have looked presidential. And probably the donning the dress of what is now considered to be (historically) an oppressed group of people would have slowed the cash flow and gotten him off message.

Revolutionaries tend to be idiots.

Mrs. P: I am so glad that you are finally coming to terms with the sins of your ancestors! As a DAR, it must be difficult for you.

Aha…that is where you err. Mine were not revolutionaries. They merely worked hard and when the revolutionaries forced the War, they were forced to choose sides. One prominent grandfather of solid means was able to provide guns, horses, food and command (as a Captain in the Minutemen not as a regular in the Army) at Roxbury when Boston was under severe threat of attack.

Another did not fight but helped to provide food and shelter to Rochambleau, his troops and the first Roman Catholic chaplain allowed to say Mass in Connecticut.

My ancestors were like most families back then : Completely divided over the cause. I also have grandfathers who fought for the British.

As you may recall, my position on the American Revolution is not whether it was good or bad. It happened. The ultimate fault lies with the Crown of England and the English Reformation. However, one of the undeniable good things that came from the Revolution was that Catholicism was allowed to be more freely practiced in this country which allowed Catholicism to be more freely practiced worldwide. While my membership to hereditary societies is partly because of my own personal interest it is also to support and protect the history of what has been and still it the greatest country in the world.

Ok, now the big guy himself just called.

That would be Mr. Paul.

Who knew we were so popular?

Mr. Paul was pitching his foreign policy.

Is John T. Kirk, American furniture expert, related to Russell T. Kirk?

(And what about James T. Kirk, and why do they all use “T”? Is it like Bullwinkle T[he]. Moose?)