Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: West Virginia State Capitol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The West Virginia State Capitol is the seat of government for the state of West Virginia, and houses the West Virginia Legislature and the office of the Governor of West Virginia. Located in Charleston, West Virginia, the building was dedicated in 1932.
History:
Prior to the American Civil War, the counties that would ultimately form West Virginia were a part of the state of Virginia; the state capitol was in Richmond, Virginia. After Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the northwest counties of Virginia loyal to the United States started the process which would ultimately create the State of West Virginia on June 20, 1863.
Settling on a state capital location, however, proved to be difficult. For several years, the capital of West Virginia intermittently traveled between Wheeling and Charleston. In 1877, however, state citizens voted on the final location of their capital. Charleston was chosen and eight years later, the first capitol building was opened. After a fire in 1921, a hastily built structure was opened but burned down in 1927.
A Capitol Building Commission, created by the Legislature in 1921, authorized construction of the present capitol. Architect Cass Gilbert designed the buff limestone structure that was to have a final cost of just under $10 million. After the three stages of construction were completed, Governor William G. Conley dedicated the capitol on June 20, 1932.
Description of the capitol plaza:
The front of the building faces the Kanawha River, and the entire capitol plaza is bordered by Kanawha Boulevard East (also known as U.S. Route 60 and the Midland Trail), Greenbrier Street (also a part of Route 60 and West Virginia Route 114, where the latter terminates), California Avenue and Piedmont Road. Formerly, Washington Street passed through the plaza, but was closed off for pedestrian use. Beside the main capitol, there are two wings which lie perpendicular to the east and west ends of the building, forming an open-ended quadrangle centered on a fountain, one of three in the plaza. The two wings are connected by low causeways on the basement level. The Governor's mansion, and buildings housing a cultural center as well as several state departments and a parking garage, all occupy the area of the plaza, with several other state departments lying east of California Avenue.
The grounds include several statues, including Abraham Lincoln on the front plaza and Stonewall Jackson, a native of the state, near the southeast corner of the plaza. The Lincoln statue depicts the President, who was in office at the time of the state's incorporation, walking at midnight, head bowed, wearing a robe over his clothes, and is located in front of the main entrance of the building, facing the river. There are also three large fountains on the grounds, in the quadrangle just behind the rear entrance of the main building; one across the pedestrian walkway from the west wing surrounded by three of the other state office buildings; and one to the northwest, between the cultural center and the Department of Motor Vehicles building, just east of the Washington Street entrance to the plaza.
Across from the Capitol complex, between Kanawha Boulevard East and the Kanahwa River, lies a plaza around the Zero Mile Marker, by which all highway measurements in the state are based. The plaza also includes flagpoles with the American flag and the West Virginia flag. The plaza also includes staircases down to the banks of the river.
Despite claims to the contrary, the Capitol has never been the tallest building in the state; that honor belongs to the Kanawha Valley Building to the west, completed three years prior to the Capitol's dedication.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (WV -- Charleston -- State Capitol) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2018_WV_Charleston_CapI: WV -- Charleston -- State Capitol -- Interior (42 photos from 2018)
2018_WV_Charleston_Cap: WV -- Charleston -- State Capitol -- Exterior (13 photos from 2018)
2008_WV_Charleston_CapI: WV -- Charleston -- State Capitol -- Interior (56 photos from 2008)
2008_WV_Charleston_Cap: WV -- Charleston -- State Capitol -- Exterior (79 photos from 2008)
1999_WV_Charleston_CapVw: WV -- Charleston -- State Capitol -- Views from... (58 photos from 1999)
Generally-Related Pages: Other pages with content (WV -- Charleston -- Capitol Complex (not covered elsewhere)) somewhat related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
1999_WV_WVVet: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Veterans Memorial (2 photos from 1999)
2008_WV_WVVet: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Veterans Memorial (19 photos from 2008)
2018_WV_WVVet: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Veterans Memorial (22 photos from 2018)
1999_WV_WVUnion: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Union Soldier Memorial (3 photos from 1999)
2008_WV_WVUnion: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Union Soldier Memorial (6 photos from 2008)
2008_WV_WVLabor: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia DIvision of Labor Bldg (4 photos from 2008)
2018_WV_WVLabor: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia DIvision of Labor Bldg (10 photos from 2018)
2008_WV_WVCW: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Civil War Memorial (8 photos from 2008)
2018_WV_WVCW: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Civil War Memorial (7 photos from 2018)
2008_WV_WVCoal: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Coal Miners Memorial (7 photos from 2008)
2018_WV_WVCoal: WV -- Charleston -- West Virginia Coal Miners Memorial (11 photos from 2018)
1999_WV_LincolnMem: WV -- Charleston -- Abraham Lincoln Memorial (7 photos from 1999)
2008_WV_LincolnMem: WV -- Charleston -- Abraham Lincoln Memorial (6 photos from 2008)
1999_WV_JacksonMem: WV -- Charleston -- Stonewall Jackson Memorial (6 photos from 1999)
2008_WV_JacksonMem: WV -- Charleston -- Stonewall Jackson Memorial (6 photos from 2008)
2008_WV_BTWMem: WV -- Charleston -- Booker T. Washington Memorial (6 photos from 2008)
2018_WV_BTWMem: WV -- Charleston -- Booker T. Washington Memorial (4 photos from 2018)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject:
[Capitols][Government]
1999 photos: Since 1984, I've lived in Silver Spring, Maryland.
From 1981 to 2002, photos were taken using a Pentax ME Super camera.
From 1989 to 2002, I was doing all pictures as prints (instead of slides which I had grown up on).
In 1997, at the age of 40, my photo obsession began and I started taking thousands of photos per year.
In September, 2002, I switched to digital cameras and the number of photos exploded.
Image quality is going to be variable because these are scans of slides and/or prints.
The images shown here were scanned in two phases. In the early years of the website, I rescanned a selection of pre-digital images, all at fairly low quality settings. During the COVID pandemic, I launched the Great Rescanning Effort, rescanning ALL of my pre-digital images from various media (prints, slides, negatives, etc) at higher resolution and quality settings. Mutilple versions of images -- some from the initial scannning phase, some from prints, some from slides/negatives -- were posted so there are frequently duplicate images on the same page. At some point, I hope to have time to do a final review and get rid of the duplicates but that'll have to wait until all of the pre-digital images are finally posted.
Trips this year: A week at a timeshare in Gordonsville, VA, two weeks in Tennessee, which included attending my first Fan Fair country music festival, and family visits to North Carolina and Florida.
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