Capitol improvements: Giant 4-year project getting down to wire

An open house for the public will be held from Jan. 5-8. What visitors will see when they walk the halls of the Capitol will be new colors and finishes on the walls and floors intended to more accurately replicate the original plans for the building.

There's plenty of real gold leaf in the Gold Room, a reception area next to the governor's office where the plaster cherubs have been stripped of their gold spray paint and painstakingly refinished to look like they were carved from ivory.

The gold and purple fabric specially woven in Italy for the walls, though, has yet to arrive. It's in the same shipment as the gold-colored material that will cover the walls of the governor's office.

The new doorways in the Senate chambers are done, framed in onyx selected to match the existing entryways. It wasn't easy, though. An effort to find large enough slabs in the west desert failed, and the state ended up finding the right stone in Afghanistan.

But, Hart said, no one in Afghanistan could cut the stone. So it was shipped to Verona, Italy, where artisans insisted on waiting for Hart and other state officials to arrive with precise plans before chipping away at the yellow-tinged stone.

In the House chambers, new artwork will be unveiled along the ceiling. Even more dramatic may be the amount of light seeping into that and other parts of the building, much of it thanks to new, clearer glass installed in the skylights.

Some of the corridors, too, are brighter. Hart said the project attempted to restore the original plans that called for big, facing windows on each side of the building not to be blocked by interior walls.

Other historically accurate touches aren't as readily visible, such as the 30 or so seagulls on the rotunda ceiling that have been painted over because they weren't part of the original artwork.

And there will be new additions to the building, too, including four larger-than-life bronze statues that represent key elements of Utah culture: land and community, immigration and settlement, arts and education, and science and technology.

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