Through the Halls of History with Ruthann Hubbert-Kemper, Keeper of the Capitol

Ruthann Hubbert-Kemper became involved with the multi-faceted, twenty-five year restora­tion of Pennsylvania’s monumental State Capitol on the proverbial ground floor. She arrived in Harrisburg in February 1980 as an intern, while enrolled in Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove. Because she loved the building, she had asked to be assigned to an office in the State Capitol. She began working with Representative Fred C. Noye, a former school teacher from Perry County – a perfect match for Hubbert-Kemper, whose internship accorded her aca­demic credits.

Her background as a local historian, her work with the Snyder County Histor­ical Society, her relentless quest for historical accuracy, and her dedica­tion to detail made her the ideal choice for the position of execu­tive director of the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee. During her career, Hubbert-Kem­per has worked with individuals from all walks of life, including reenactors, historians, curators, researchers, conservators, curators, oral historians, and students. At the State Capitol, she has dealt with everyone, from groundskeepers to governors.

Restoration of Pennsylvania’s State Capitol has attracted national atten­tion. In fact, it’s a story so big that it has generated thousands of articles since the Pennsylvania Capitol Preser­vation Committee, which spearheaded the mammoth project, was created in 1982. On the one hundredth an­niversary of the State Capitol – and on the eve of the committee’s twenty­-fifth – Ruthann Hubbert-Kemper took time from her frenetic schedule to share behind-the-scenes glimpses of the Capi­tol’s restoration – and the individuals who made it possible.

This interview took place on Tuesday, June 20, 2006, in the offices of the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee in the State Capitol, sur­rounded by objects and artifacts that Hubbert-Kemper and the committee rescued from neglect and ignominy.

You actually began working in the State Capitol before the formation of the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee?

I started my internship in Represen­tative Fred Noye’s office working at a coffee table because there was no desk. I wrote a paper on the role of the state legislator and the workings of the caucus. I could actually observe how the caucus in Pennsylvania worked. In April 1980, a group of fifty-four individuals appointed by Governor Dick Thornburgh issued a report which called for the creation of a special tercentenary committee, which ultimately led to “Pennsylvania’s 300th Birthday: A Celebration of Friends,” an eighteen-month long observance, from 1981 to 1983. A resolution for the creation of the com­mittee passed and I was put on it.

Representative Joseph Pitts chaired the committee and Representative Kurt Zwikl was its vice chair. It was a bipar­tisan committee. It was then I realized that the State Capitol was going to be seventy-five years old in October 1981, which had not entered anyone’s mind. People were concerned only with observ­ing Pennsylvania’s three hundredth an­niversary at the time. The restoration of the Capitol ultimately grew out of this committee.

You credit the late Matthew J. Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives. with initiating the restoration of the State Capitol?

I do. After Speaker [H. Jack) Seltzer retired, Matthew J. Ryan, of Delaware County, was appointed speaker. Several months after his appointment in 1981, Speaker Ryan – who had inherited me­ – called and said he needed to speak with me. He told me that when he first began at the Capitol he parked his car behind the building and walked through the parking lot. One morning, he saw beside a large garbage dumpster a butchered marble fireplace that had been torn out of the building. He did some investigat­ing and discovered that a House member didn’t want the mantle in his office any­more. The representative was redecorat­ing and he had the state Department of General Services [DGS), which manages the buildings in the Capitol Complex, come in and chop it out.

This obviously had a great impact on Speaker Ryan.

It did and he described to me in detail how he felt.

“By the time I reached the door that morning ,” Matt said, “I knew what I wanted to do: to preserve this building as my legacy. I want to preserve this building and stop people from being able to cannibalize and bastardize this grand edifice. I want to preserve it for our kids and our grandkids. More than anything else, I believe this is something that we need to do because this building belongs to the public. It doesn’t belong to the legislators and those sent here to do a job – this is everybody’s building.” He looked at me and asked what we should do.

Given the enormity of such a task, how did you even begin?

I told Matt that I had just read an article about California spending sixty-eight million dollars to renovate and restore its state capitol in Sacra­mento. He looked at me and told me to call the capitol in California and to begin visiting other state capitol buildings and find out if there were other restoration projects in progress. I contacted my counterparts at the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford, and then I visited New York’s capitol building at Albany.

What was among your earliest concerns?

The one startling thing I found with all of these projects was that there was nothing in place at the ti me, not even in California, to maintain the restored areas after the project ended.

Matt Ryan immediately realized the problems this oversight presented, warning that if the building wasn’t maintained afterwards, it would revert to the same condition it was before its restoration. We both realized that a committee was needed to ensure both the restoration and the continuing preservation. There was only one committee that had been in existence for quite a long time, the White House Historical Association, organized in the early sixties. I had read much about the White House curator, Clement E. Conger, and the White House restoration. I didn’t have a computer. There was no Google at that time.

Matt recommended that I meet with Clem Conger as soon as I could. I was naive and asked if it was appropriate to just call up the White House and ask to speak with him. Speaker Ryan told me he’d make a telephone call; the next week I was on my way to Washington to meet the curator of the White House!

That must have been an exciting experience.

Mr. Conger spent several hours with me and we talked and walked around. I met a number of people, and I got to go behind the scenes, to see what they do and how they do it. He really gave me terrific advice, encouraging us to establish a state capitol preservation committee and, especially, to put the right kind of people on it. He told me to keep it simple and small, with indi­viduals who are doing things, people whose work affects the building, people at DGS and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission [PHMC].

He recommended we appoint key political leaders, bipartisan leaders, especially the Speaker of the House. I told him about Matt Ryan’s efforts and he assured me we were on the right track. After I told him that the State Capitol also houses the Supreme Court, the Superior Court, and the Governor’s Office, he recommended that we ask each of them to make ap­pointments to the committee.

Did members of the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee come exclusively from legislative, judicial, and executive circles?

No, Clem Conger said we needed to recruit private citizens, individuals with backgrounds in the fine and decorative arts, historic preservation, architecture, or conservation. I returned from Washington and went home that weekend to Snyder County, where I wrote up his recommendations. I gave the paper to Matt. He looked at me, read it, and was very quiet. “I think you have something,” he said. “Take this to Ed Hussey in the legal department and have them put it in bill form. Ask them to check the regu­lations to make sure we are not violating laws affecting any other state agency.” Two weeks later I gave the proposed bill to Matt for his review. He asked if I had any reservations. I did. I told him I’d like stronger language, but people in legal had been telling me that that wasn’t possible. He took the document to K. Leroy Irvis, Democratic house floor leader at the time.

What happened next?

Matt came back to the office that afternoon and told me Representative Irvis and he were going to cosponsor the bill. I was thrilled. It passed in the House, went over to the Senate. It was revised in the Senate, came back, and then Governor Dick Thornburgh signed it into law in late December 1982. The State Capitol Preservation Act also au­thorized creation of the Capitol Restoration Trust Fund, which has allowed us to accept gifts and raise funds for the effort.

And that’s an insider’s peek at the beginning of the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee?

Matt Ryan and Walter Baran [DGS secretary under Governor Thornburgh] began talking about ways to preserve the State Capitol. Wally was extremely en­thusiastic and helpful. Matt told him that we were going to at­tempt to find original furniture and we needed his help to let us search in a number of spaces, such as attic rooms, tunnels, crawl spac-es, and the like. A fellow at DGS, Max, in charge of moving furnishings, was given keys and told to take me wherever I wanted to go, and we climbed around all over the place.

As a joke for my birthday that year, Sue Kistler and Frank Linn in the Speaker’s Office gave me a hard hat, a flare, and a number of things so that if I got in trouble, I could leave a trail. It was a joke back then because I was dragging things into the office, beat-up and worn stuff, saying “This is historic. You have to keep it. This is wonderful.” Frank began calling me “Antique,” and that became his nickname for me.

But you actually began identifying original furnishings even before creation of a committee? How did you recognize them after they were removed from there original locations?

At the time I was starting to search through all of the caverns and cavities in the State Capitol and I was seeing pieces of furniture that were pictured in an old book that Bill Thomas, a rare book dealer in Mechanicsburg, had given me. It was in this book that I saw a photograph of the Speaker’s chair and a lot of other antique furniture.

Once I could recognize the furniture, I’d try to locate it. When I did find a piece, I’d haul it back to our office and tell everyone we needed to preserve it. People just didn’t realize that much of the furniture was original to the 1906 State Capitol. As soon as it looked old or became worn and rickety, it was sent out to the state surplus office to be disposed of, no matter how important it might have been.

So you were successful in finding the original chair used by the speaker of the House of Representatives?

As I began making people more aware of the importance of saving original furnishings, I found the origi­nal Speaker’s chair! It was designed by Joseph M. Huston, the building’s architect, specifically for the House chamber. I discovered it in the base­ment of the Finance Building. It was encased in a wire cage in a storage area assigned to the PHMC. I didn’t know it at the time, but I did learn later that this priceless chair had been relegated to state surplus in the 1950s.

How did such an important artifact come so perilously close to being lost forever?

We had had a Speaker who was quite short in stature. He felt the chair made him look even smaller and told staff to get rid of it. Thankfully, there was an elderly man out at the state surplus office who hid the chair in a closet and told employees that it shouldn’t be scrapped or sold. Before be retired, he talked to someone at the PHMC, which secured it in its storage cage at the Finance Building.

The only time the chair had ever been taken out of storage and used was when the PHMC loaned it to the John Wanamaker department store for a Santa Claus display. At the time it was covered in red vinyl, and when it came back from the store it was broken. And so the chair stayed in storage, long forgotten and in need of repair.

And then?

I had showed the photograph of the chair to Speaker Seltzer, a member from Lebanon County, and he encour­aged me to retrieve it. I cleaned it and brought it back to the Capitol by the end of that week. I then worked with the PHMC so we could regain possession of it.

Your involvement with the project actually began with the restoration of the furnishing , and not the building?

With the furniture, mostly because I saw original pieces illustrated in that old book. Because there was no committee at this time – and no money – I needed to find alternative ways to restore the furniture. I learned that the Camp Hill State Correctional Institution had a workshop to repair and refinish furniture so I took pieces there. I went into the prison, escorted by armed guards, and talked to the inmates, telling them how I wanted a piece redone, and then I’d be escorted out. That’s how we started repairing furniture for the State Capitol.

Was there much resistance from state legislators or their staffs to have you come in and tell them what they should or should not do?

There was in the beginning. To overcome any reluctance, we needed to show-in living color – not only what the original decoration looked like, but also how beautiful the building could be. The Pennsylva nia Capitol Preservation Committee had just come into being and we needed to make a first impression that was convincing and lasting. It was difficult because no money bad yet been appropriated for the committee.

Nevertheless, we wanted to bave a large celebration in October 1981. On October 4, 1906, Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker dedicated the Capitol and President Teddy Roosevelt gave the for­mal address. Matt Ryan conceived the idea of a party hosted by the tercente­nary people. He went so far as to offer the committee’s assistance to write the speeches for the Legislators, so we could induce them to buy into the preservation of this grand building. And that’s exactly what happened.

We developed the script and the outline, and we organized the celebration to draw attention to the fact that out of this tercentenary committee came the creation of a committee to preserve the State Capitol.

Did it work out as planned?

Speaker Ryan knew people needed to see proof – and we needed them to see what this building could look like. He volunteered his office as the first project area. “Let’s show them how glorious this building looked in 1906,” he said, adding “once they see it, they will like what they see.” We undertook a paint analysis. We called in people to conserve the ceiling. We did a certain amount of the wood­work, not all, but we did clean it. We cleaned the marble fireplace, polished the brass fixtures, and replaced the non-historic reproduction carpeting with a historic reproduction of the original 1906 carpet. We repaired a number of chairs, which we had also discovered, that were period to that specific room.

Our work was painstaking. We studied the original Huston drawings to see how large the brass caps were on the original upholstery. We enlarged historic photographs to really see the details on the original furniture. Then we started fixing things, like the gover­nor’s chair, which still had its original leather, but it was worn and cracked and the springs were practically falling through to the floor.

What was the general condition of the furniture?

So many chairs in the Gover­nor’s Reception Room were des­perately in need of repair. I found out about a man at Harpers Ferry while I was here meeting with flag conservators. They told me about a conservator who retired after suffering a heart attack. I called him and asked if he would tackle our chairs, even if it meant doing them one at a time. He agreed and so I took them down to him. It was a real “hands-on” experience.

How did work begin on the build­ing in general?

People began buying into the restoration after seeing the few offices that had been done, tell­ing us they’d like to have their offices look like that. To keep the momentum building, we began working right away on the public corridors on the building’s south side, including cleaning the marble surfaces and restoring a skylight.

It appears the project was moving along quite well

It did-until the day one of the capitol policemen came running into my office shouting that a painting had just collapsed off the wall of the great rotunda and was hanging up there by only a few pieces of canvas. We im­mediately set up scaffolding in the rotunda, called conservator John Rita, from Altoona, to come in and help, and went up and carefully cut the canvas off. Tt was a piece about six feet long by five feet wide that had just peeled away from the wall.

It had been raining for about four days and the dome was leaking badly. All four of the murals by Edwin Austin Abbey were deteriorating but DGS didn’t have the money in its budget to repair the dome and restore the murals.

How was the work funded?

The committee funded this project. The project was in the works two months shy of two years. Workers erect­ed scaffolding up inside the dome – you couldn’t see the dome for two years. The scaffolding needed to be designed in such a way so that you could still hold public events and ceremonies in the rotunda. When the scaffolding came down, we celebrated with a huge party to show people what could be done to preserve the beauty of the building. The success of the dome proj­ect encouraged continuing the work in the corridors and public spaces.

Before the committee was established, who was responsible for monitoring a alterations in the State Capitol?

Everyone was doing their own thing in their offices. Every time there was a major shift from Republican to Democrat, or vice-versa, everybody moved and traded places. The fur­niture changed. Carpets frequently changed because work stations were set up differently. Other people didn’t like colors or fabrics in certain rooms and they changed.

I distinctly remember one legisla­tor, a woman who adored pink. She had the carpet in her office changed to pink. The draperies were switched to pink. The upholstery in the chairs went pink. People hated to go into that office which they called the Pepto-Bis­mol Room. It was pink, pink, pink.

How did you sensitize legislators and their staffs to the importance of historically accurate or appropriate colors and finishes?

Legislators could decorate their of­fices any way they wanted, and there were instances where one would say, “I like this color but my wife likes another. What do you think?” I’d tell them we should choose colors that Joseph Huston would have used. I’d assure them that it wasn’t the commit­tee’s choice and it certainly wasn’t my personal preference. We were using historically accurate colors. We were doing what was right for the building.

As renovations started throughout the building, and as we began return­ing original furniture, people would walk into these rooms and exclaim, “I like those draperies. I like the way that looks.” As curiosity and excite­ment grew, more and more people wanted to be a part of the project. It was an exciting time.

How do you monitor such an enormous complex?

Thankfully, we now have a lot of people who are our eyes and ears. They see things – where a chunk of marble or a piece of wood has been knocked loose. They bring us this piece and tell us where to look. Once a year we take a floor chart and go through the entire building. Every summer, when things quiet down-when the legisla­tors are home and the school student tours have ended – we undertake what we call “a little bit more than routine” mainte­nance program. We note areas where a wall needs to be repainted again, or where something’s been damaged and needs to be repaired. Nevertheless, we still must go through the Capitol every week for routine maintenance.
Is the work still as intensive and as extensive?

It’s not as intensive as what we do when we do a big walk-through inspec­tion. Hardware, though, is in a class all by itself.

It’s not as intensive as what we do when we do a big walk-through inspec­tion. Hardware, though, is in a class all by itself. In order to save all the historic 1906 locks, we have a man that we work with every year who is quite ingenious. He was a tool and dye maker and he has a knack for being able to solve problems that we take to him. DGS was planning to replace all the 1906 hardware with new locks to meet code and so we asked if we could keep the original hardware and retrofit it to install a new lever. This gentleman put his mind to work and came up with a way to save all the original hardware. These are the types of problems we tackle daily.

How large is your staff?

We have a staff of nine, including two project managers, and that’s good for now. We cut back a bit because the rooms are done, but there’s always some sort of work being carried out. It’s just that it’s not on the massive scale that it had been, although a lot of work remains to be done to restore the historic 1920s and 1930s Capitol Complex buildings art work.

Because some of the early work was done hurriedly to move people back into their offices as soon as possible, some of the woodwork and other details need to be redone with a bit more finesse. We’re also trying to get things caught up now with the landscape. We wanted to focus on the building to finish it by the centenni­al. As we told more and more people, it became a reality. Matt Ryan and I talked about that many,many times. Speaker Ryan died in office in 2003 and didn’t live to see the centennial of his beloved State Capitol.

The State Capitol benefited from the talents of many individuals through the years?

Matt Ryan loved this building. Thanks to Governor Thornburgh, who implemented the construction of the East Wing, the master plan for the Capitol Complex could be put into motion. We’ve had some extraordinary individuals appointed to the commit­tee by various governors: historical ar­chitect John R. Bowie, Beatrice Garvan, Philadelphia Museum of Art curator, and architect Denise Scott Brown.

We’ve also had some really good people from the House, the Senate, and the Supreme and Superior Courts, many of whom have kept in touch with us. They enjoy hearing from the committee. They look forward to our annual reports. They like to know what’s happening. They’ve helped make an investment in the cause and they’re extremely loyal.

Isn’t it true that the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee set the standard for massive governmental preservation programs?

We receive requests from all over the country, from people who want infor­mation about the project. Others want copies of the legislation that created and supported the committee. We hear from people at other state capitols who want to organize a preservation group. We’re often approached by organiza­tions who want us to visit their sites so that we can offer practical advice.

You’ve earned quite a reputation as a super sleuth and tireless treasure hunter. Can you tell us about the treasures you’ve captured and the ones that got away – the proverbial “lost” and “found”?

There were two fabulous chandeliers in the governor’s private office – they were unlike anything in the entire building. Chandeliers in each area of the State Capitol are unique, and the fixtures in the major chambers are extraordinary.

Even before I came to the capitol, I remember meeting one of the old electricians who told me before he retired that a company came in and took these two chandeliers down and left only a portion of the originals – the chains and the ceiling plates. Today, they hold lights in what l call “post office modern style.” They’re circular and resemble wagon-wheels. Sadly, that’s what’s hanging from these historic chains in this great space.

At least we have photographs of what these original chandeliers looked like. They’re something that I really, truly, hope we find someday. My dream is to see them put back up in the governor’s private office.

And the treasures you’ve found?

There are so many. People are extremely generous when it comes to their State Capitol. They’ve been help­ful with tips and advice on where we could find original pieces of furniture. One of the unique pieces of furniture I looked for over many years was the desk made exclusively for the Lieuten­ant Governor’s Office, and when I found it, I was ecstatic.

Many people believe there are secret chambers and passageways in the Capitol. Is this true?

When I first arrived at the State Capitol, I crawled around down in the subbasement and found a door that looked as if it hadn’t been opened in a long, long time. I had a locksmith cut the lock off the door because nobody had a key. The old door was rickety and was going to be torn out anyway. He cut the lock and opened the door and we found ourselves in a small room – about the size of a large closet­ that contained many old drawings on paper. They were historic drawings of the Capitol! We began going through them and I realized this was a real find. I called the State Archives and archivists came over and for awhile we all stood down there in the basement in amazement. We then unfolded and unrolled these drawings and began organizing them.

Did this lead to anything else?

Beyond that small space there was another section that had been closed up for who knows how many years. I found the passageway to get in there. I always carried a flashlight with me because I was climbing in and out, and all over the place.

When I looked into this room, I saw old fifty-five-gallon drums and broken porcelain toilet fixtures lying on the concrete floor. There were chunks of coal and dirt and dust. The room was full of cobwebs but through all of that, I saw something that was kind of like glistening a bit, sort of shining. In the dark I managed to climb over the broken fixtures until I found what was glimmering from my flashlight – a dozen or so chandeliers that had been removed from various rooms over the years. Strewn about on the concrete floor were cut crystal globes and glass shades. Many, unfortunately, had been broken. I raced back to Speaker Ryan’s of­fice. “You’re not going to believe what l just found today!” I got one of the DGS people, the man we called “Max the Mover,” and several of his men, and we went down in there the following week and started carting out these treasures. We stored them in another building so they’d be safe until we could begin reinstall­ing them. The historic chandeliers we found are now hanging in the building and look beautiful.

Not to be morbid, but individuals realize that work on such large-scale construction projects – from bridge to skyscrapers – often result in the loss of lives. Were there any deaths during the construction of the State Capitol?

Unfortunately, six workers died during construction. The first fatality took place in May 1903, when a chunk of terra-cotta fell on Owen Roberts, a construction company superintendent, fracturing his skull. The others died mostly by falling. Considering the size and scope of the project, it’s little wonder that more didn’t meet their deaths.

As we celebrate the centennial of one of the most beautiful buildings in the country, what message would you like to leave for our readers ?

Come visit! In the state Capitol, visitors will discover works of art by the greatest artists of the day. There are murals by Edwin Austin Abbey and Vi­olet Oakley statuary by George Grey Barnard, stained glass by William Brantley Van Ingen. This is a living muse­um, where history is being made each and every day against a backdrop of some of the most fabulous works of art ever created.

Travel Tips

Ten years after Harrisburg became the center of state government, a capitol building designed by Stephen Hills was completed and opened to the state legisla­ture on January 2, 1822. In the ensuing years, private citizens donated art to decorate the interior of the “red brick capitol,” destroyed by fire in 1897. The State Museum of Pennsylvania is showing, through March 4, 2007, “Capitol Art,” an exhibit highlighting several works of art saved from the burning building, including portraits of Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus, and George Washington, which had been donated to the State Capitol in the mid-nineteenth century. The large Washington portrait, which had hung in the Senate Chamber, disappeared after the fire but was rediscovered eighty years later in a Virginia antiques shop and donated to the Commonwealth. “Capitol Art” includes historic paintings, prints, and photographs.

“Capitol Art” features original architectural drawings submitted by Philadelphia architect Joseph M. Huston (1866-1940). These drawings won him the commission for the magnificent edifice. Huston intended to make the State Capitol a “Palace of Art,” a building that would represent a unity of Renaissance art and architecture – an American masterpiece expressing the Keystone State’s history and industrial might.

Construction of the State Capitol involved many artists and artisans. Two artists represented in “Capitol Art” are muralist Violet Oakley (1874-1961) and George Storm (1831-1913), portrait and landscape painter. On view are rarely exhibited, original preliminary oils, watercolors, gouaches, and pastel drawings by Oakley for her murals in the Governor’s Recep­tion Room, the Senate, and the Supreme Court Chamber. A native of Johnstown, Cambria County, Storm was a self-taught artist who painted numerous likenesses of state officials and nostalgic transportation land­scapes for the State Capitol Works of art showcased in the exhibit have been selected from The State Museum’s permanent collection which includes more than four hundred mural studies by Oakley and twenty-one paintings by Storm.

Also on view at The State Museum is “The Founding of the State of Liberty Spiritual: Violet Oakley’s Studies for the Governor’s Reception Room Murals – Pennsylvania Capitol.” Huston believed the decoration of one room in the State Capitol should be entrusted exclusively to a female artist, emphasizing it would, “add interest to the building and act as an encouragement of women of the State.” He then announced fellow Philadelphian Violet Oakley as recipient of the commission for the murals in the Governor’s Reception Room. Huston chose her purely because of her immense talent and described her as a distinguished painter. Oakley submitted the original oil studies on exhibition to the Capitol Building Commission for approval of her subject matter, as well as content, style, scale, and theme.

The location of Oakley’s oil studies for the Governor’s Reception Room remained unknown until 2004, when an inquiry was received from Initiatives of Change, Switzerland, an organization devoted to human rights and social justice. The Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Commit­tee approved acquisition of these highly significant pieces, with funding provided by the Capitol Restoration Trust Fund (CRTF). The CRTF is a separate fund kept by the state Treasury Department for donations from private individuals and organizations, along with proceeds from the sale of committee publications, reproductions, ornaments, and collectibles.

“The Founding of the State of Liberty Spiritual” remains on view through Sunday, December 31, 2006. Visit the State Museum of Pennsylvania website.

The exhibit is available for loan to historical organizations and cultural institutions, beginning in 2007. For information, telephone (717) 783-6484.

For Further Reading

Caffin, Charles Henry. Handbook of the New Capitol of Pennsylvania. Harris­burg: Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, 2002.

Hubbert-Kemper, Ruthann, and Jason L. Wilson, eds. Mercer, Henry Chapman. The Tiled Pavement in the Capitol of Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, 1998.

Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Com­mittee. A Sacred Challenge: Violet Oakley and the Pennsylvania Capitol Murals. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, 2002.

____. Literature in Stone: The Hundred Year History of Pennsylvania’s State Capitol. Harrisburg: Pennsyl­vania State Capitol Committee, 2006.

Pennypacker, Samuel W. The Desecra­tion and Profanation of the Pennsyl­vania Capitol. Philadelphia: William J. Campbell, 1911.

Michael J. O’Malley III has served as editor of Pennsylvania Heritage since 1984. He and Ruthann Hubbert-Kemper were recently photographed before William B. Van Ingen’s stained glass window entitled Printing Press in the House chamber.