We have been exercising the rights and responsibilities of Self Government in virginia for nearly 400 years and thats something worth watching. Well the capitol certainly has a commanding presence here in austin. It is at the top of the hill. Capitol square, it is over 22 acres of park light grounds. It has this beautiful renaissance revival style with a massive red granite. It is very easy to see it from any advantage point within downtown austin. We do have a round dome. Not unlike the nations capitol and we are topped by the god he is of liberty, the beautiful statue that graces our tip top of the capitol dome. Texans are very proud of the fact that the Texas Capitol is taller than the national capitol. When the first capitol on capitol was complete in 1863 it wasnt very tall and not popular and they made plans for a grander capitol for texas and with the plans they quickly realized they couldnt afford the kind of massive structure they had in mind. So they were able to set aside over 3 million acres of land in the texas panhandle and they were able to trade that so that the Texas Capitol could be completed in 1888. The Texas Capitol is a great opportunity for us to impart to our visitors the story of texas. The story of the land that it took to build the capitol. But also about the history of the state of texas, not only as a state, but then of course the before it was a republic of texas and to have all of the beautiful paintings that we have throughout the building, and our capitol tour guides who give an opportunity to show the building to all of our visitors, we have a great opportunity to talk about the capitol and to impart all of that information to our visitors. When visitors walk into the capitol, whether it is the south en entrance or another, they start to see the grandeur of the building, the architecture of the building we have such beautiful large spaces it almost cries for public art that were able to show off to the public at the south foyer we have beautiful sculpture of the sam houston and steven f. Austin done by german artist and those are on display at the United States capitol. Only either side of the south foyer we have the paintings that the surrender of santa ana and then david crockett, both of which are massive in size to kind of do justice to the story that is larger than life, which is Texas History. The battle [ inaudible ] was fought on april 21st of 1836. It was an important battle just six weeks after the loss of the alamo. Mexican forces numbered about 1400 people and the texans only 900. And because vinces bridge had been destroyed, they were able able to receive reinforcements or to retreat so during an afternoon siesta, the texas forces attacked and were able to defeat them in less than 20 minutes. In terms of the impact of the battle, texas was able to have its independence from mexico. And of course we celebrate san jacinto day every year in texas. It is a state holiday. Inside of the Senate Chamber theresy beautiful portrait on the dais that shows steven f. Austin in a painting of his i think tenure, painted by an unknown artist, possibly in new orleans. Other paintings include likeness of lamar. He was instrumental in making sure that the capitol remained in austin. He had spent time in austin at that point in time. It was named waterloo and he hoped this would be the place where the capitol of texas would remain. We have more recent paintings in the senator including barbara jordan, lyndon johnson, former president of the United States. The only tex ill in the capitol artifact collection is the flag from the battle of san jacinto. It normally hangs on the dais behind the speaker as roster. We only have it on display when the legislature is in session. It is very fragile and we try to keep it protected under the red drapery, we usually have a replica hanging in its place because the legislature will gavel in in january of 2015, we have the original on display and it is one of those, think, iconic Texas History artifacts that all of our School Children who come to the capitol to learn about Texas History, to learn about capitol history and about how to be a good citizen, they have an opportunity to see these kinds of artifacts up close and personal. The capitol welcomes more than a million visitors every year and were always thankful to show them not only the capitol itself, and all of the wonderful hist orric furnishings but we have a number of monuments on Capitol Grounds to various causes. For example, on the south grounds we have four of our most historic monuments, we have terry Texas Rangers and we have the alamo monument, we have the Confederate Monument and we have the volunteer firemen monument. In the early 1990s , the capito under went a massive restoration. And we were able to return ten spaces to the turn of the century appearance. So one of the spaces is the Supreme Courtroom. Of course when myers completed the capitol in 1888, we actually were able to house all of the State Government within these walls. As you could imagine, State Government has grown since then and at this point the Supreme Court offices in another adjacent building. But this room really gives us an if opportunity to talk a little bit about the Supreme Court and the Judicial Branch of government, across the way we have the appeals courtroom and in between these two our tour guides are able to tell the public about that branch of the government and really provide a great deal of information in terms of how texas Government Works today. We are very hopeful that um have a chance to come visit the Texas Capitol personally. We love to see not only texans walk through our doors but we see literally hundreds of thousands of people walk through our doors from not only all 50 states in the United States, but really from several Foreign Countries as well. Come vit
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