Maryland State House

Author's Comments

The dome is older than the country it now symbolizes. That fact takes a moment to settle in when you are standing on School Street in early October, late afternoon, the light coming in low from the southwest and turning the wooden lantern at the top the color of dried honey. I have spent time with a lot of capitol buildings in this region and none of them sit quite like this one. The State House does not announce itself the way Washington's monuments do. It sits at the top of a modest hill in a modest city and it lets you come to it. The proportions are human. The dome rises, but not aggressively. There is a restraint to the whole structure that feels more honest than grandeur. From School Street you get the full composition - the dome centered, the flanking wings balanced, the bare branches of a November oak sometimes entering the frame from the left if you position yourself right. Spring works too, when the surrounding trees are just beginning to leaf and the green is still pale. I prefer fall. The sky goes a deeper blue and the dome reads more clearly against it. The interior rewards the climb. The Old Senate Chamber gets afternoon light through tall windows that was not designed for photography but functions beautifully as it. The light falls in long diagonals across the floor. If you are there before the guided tours start moving through, and the room is empty, and the light is doing what it does around three o'clock, the space tells you something about what these buildings were actually for.

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