By Dave Dahl
SPRINGFIELD – “I want to create an environment where people feel welcome.”
That’s what Andrea Aggertt, the architect of the Capitol, says she wants to achieve in keeping up the Capitol while maintaining its historic authenticity.
On the job about a year, her first high-profile assignment, as directed by a four-member board, is to boot the statues of early leaders Stephen Douglas and Pierre Menard off the Capitol grounds, because of their ties to slavery. She says the removal will be within the next few years, with the statues headed for storage.
“What was important and significant in history back then has been altered with time,” she said, “so I don’t feel like those with the backgrounds of those two gentlemen should be immortalized and placed on our Capitol lawn.”
As for another controversy, Aggertt defends a predecessor’s decision to hang expensive copper doors at the west entrance during a $50 million renovation. Aggertt says the doors are historically accurate, and, if they last 100 years as billed, cost the state roughly six dollars a day.
Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].
