The Sun Shines Bright on My Old Kentucky Capitol

I've been inside roughly half of the state capitol buildings in this country, and seen maybe a dozen more from the outside, either because the building was closed, or I was driving by and didn't have time to stop. Some capitols are closer than others to where I live in northeastern Illinois, and I've seen most of the relatively close ones. But for some reason, I'd never made it to Frankfort, Ky., until early this month, even though it's not that far off a well-beaten track of mine, the run between Chicago and Nashville.

I always thought it odd that the commonwealth's capital is where it is. As a capital, Frankfort doesn't get much recognition. The following trick question, which I've heard asked, illustrates the point: How do you pronounce the capital of Kentucky, LOUIE-ville or Lou-AH-ville?

A day was enough time to get acquainted with Frankfort, a pleasant town on the Kentucky River that happens to sport this handsome beaux-arts capitol, landscaped by no less than Fredrick Law Olmstead:

It pretty much has everything you want in a state capitol: a lot of marble, statues and plaques and paintings, some grand staircases and a sweeping rotunda. There are also details you might not expect, such as the use of fasces, which are featured in a number of architectural details around the building. Above the north entrance is a pediment chock full o' allegorical figures, including Kentucky herself, History, Plenty, Law, Art and Labor. The guide pamphlet adds: "To the right are two Indians suggestive of earlier times in Kentucky, which were described in 1910 by the Capitol building's first superintendent, C.M. Fleenor, as 'crouching in fear' as they watched the inevitable approach of settlers and civilization." They do indeed seem crowded out by all those other allegories.

This interior shot, on the second floor, came out better than expected:

Barely visible is the top of the Abraham Lincoln statue, which is on the first floor of the rotunda, exactly in the center. Illinois is merely where he made his living. By contrast he did his rail splitin' and other honest-Abe boyhood-type activities in Kentucky, though Indiana has a claim on the adolescent Lincoln. Four other statues stand against the walls facing Lincoln: Jefferson Davis, Henry Clay, Alben Barkley and Ephraim McDowell.

McDowell, an early Kentucky doctor, was the only one I didn't recognize. Among other things, he performed the first successful ovariotomy in this country, and also removed a bladder stone from James K. Polk before Polk was president.

There's a TV series to be created from old Doc McDowell, I think: Ephraim McDowell, Frontier Surgeon. Why not? It seems that there's already been a show about doctoring in the days before medicine was informed by much empiricism -- Dr. Quinn, Anachronistic Woman. That means that McDowell could likewise be updated, say to reflect his hatred of slavery. Of course, maybe he did hate slavery, but no need to actually look into the matter.

They weren't many people visiting the capitol on the morning of July 5, so even the noise that Lilly and Ann made from time to time didn't seem to bother anyone. At one point, we went into the House gallery, and found it completely empty. That is, until a couple of security guards came to ask us to leave, since the gallery door was supposed to be locked, they said.

Just before we left, I noticed that I'd missed seeing one very important memorial in the Kentucky capitol -- one perhaps unique in all the capitols in all the states of the union. While everyone else relaxed on a bench, I dashed off to the west entrance of the building to look for it. I found it:

Yes indeed, it's a bust of Col. Harland Sanders. Plenty of capitols have official recognition of pioneers, but how many fast-food pioneers are thus enshrined? Ray Kroc was from Chicago, but I don't think we'll be seeing a bust of him at City Hall anytime soon. Of course, it helps that the Colonel didn't call his restaurant Sanders Fried Chicken or the like. The name of Kentucky has traveled the world with his fried chicken, so much so that if you say "Kentucky" to a Japanese, odds are he will think of the chicken brand, since there's little other reason he would have heard of the state, any more than most Americans would know, say, Aomori Prefecture. (Known for apples, not chicken.)

The fame of Col. Sanders is so enduring, in fact, that he has been able to curse a Japanese baseball team whose fans apparently displeased him. This blogger is not making the curse up; I remember it quite well from when I lived in Japan.