Visitors to the Iowa Capitol building are noticing a big change these days: The hole in the first-floor rotunda area is gone.
Workers this summer filled in an open, circular area in the floor near the governor’s formal office with inch-thick frosted glass and metal framing, altering an open look from the ground floor to the domed ceiling that had been a fixture in one of state government’s most architecturally distinctive buildings for nearly a century.
Mark Willemssen, legislative facilities manager, said the permanent change is part of an ongoing, multi-year renovation at the Statehouse designed to restore the building to much of its origin state.
“Originally, when the building was built, there was a glass floor there in the center,” Willemssen said.
Sometime after 1910, an area of the floor directly below the dome was removed on the first floor and a decorative railing was placed around the circular opening, he said.
Not only does the change, which took about a month to accomplish, restore the original integrity of the structure, Willemssen said, it also will provide a heating and cooling benefit that will save on utility costs.
During winter months, the movement of people in and out of the ground floor’s exterior doors created a rush of cold air that would push most of the heat up the rotunda in a chimney-like function, he said. That also contributed to an increased danger of fire sweeping through the open-air rotunda without a cover over the circular hole in the building’s first floor to cut off the flow of air, he added.
“This should help all of that,” Willemssen said.
The revised layout causes some long-time building users to do a double take at first as they gingerly walk across the filled-in glass area for the first time.
“It’s definitely a change for the people that are regulars as they come back or come in,” Willemssen said. “It’s probably like anything else, once you get used to it you don’t notice it anymore.”
The project was part of the restoration project that was put out for bids several years ago but got delayed because the manufacture of the customized floor took longer than expected, he said.
