A CAPITOL IDEA
The result is "State Houses: America's 50 State Capitol Buildings" (Boston Mills Press, 336 pages, $49.95), a coffee-table-style book illustrated with photography by Tom Patterson.
(One take-away lesson from the book: The "capital" is the city where the "capitol" building is located.)
"I can't tell you how much fun it was," said Thrane, who lives in Vermont, one mile from the New Hampshire border.
Mention New Hampshire - or any state - and Thrane will rattle off a flurry of factoids worthy of the "Guinness Book of World Records," to wit: New Hampshire's 400-member House of Representatives is the largest legislative body in any of the 50 states. But since the state's population is just 1.3 million (slightly bigger than the city of San Diego), each legislator represents only 3,250 people. Members serve for the fun of it, not the money - they earn only $100 per year plus travel expenses.
Thrane went to states she'd never visited, such as South Dakota, where high officials, including the attorney general, welcomed her to Pierre (population, 14,000) as if she were the only tourist to visit that day.
"Thank you for coming, for your interest," they told her.
In neighboring North Dakota, she discovered one of the few variations on the standard Greco-Roman architectural motif so many states have employed for their capitols.
Built during the Depression from 1932 to 1934, the Bismarck capitol is a 19-story, Art Deco high-rise, with a low-rise legislative wing, three-story Memorial Hall erected to honor World War I and II's war dead, and other additions.
In most chapters Thrane digressed from architectural details to give readers a sense of the work done in America's "laboratories of democracy" - trying out new laws and regulations that Congress might not get to for decades.
For example, the North Dakota Legislature considered passing the first ban on genetically modified crops in 2001, only to put off final consideration pending further scientific study.
When it came to California's capitol in Sacramento, Thrane said she was struck by how busy it was the day she visited.
"The children, the people observing the Legislature - it was really interesting to see how popular it was," she said.
She complimented the state on a first-rate job of restoration, done in the 1970s and '80s at the instigation of now-retired Sen. James R. Mills, D-Coronado, and called the park surrounding the capitol "fabulous."
California's capitol was built about the same time as the similarly designed U.S. Capitol dome, during the Civil War, and both owed their classical look to the precedent set by Thomas Jefferson, who designed Virginia's capitol while he was the American ambassador to France in the 1780s.
"The symmetry and orderly forms symbolized their own freedom and democracy," she wrote, referring to the states and their choice of architecture. "An added advantage to the adoption of this style was that the buildings were often designed from pattern books and constructed by unskilled workers, who were capable of working with the style's uncomplicated form of rectangular shapes, simple columns, plain pilasters and pedimented gables."
In some cases, she had to track down blueprints in state archives to get the details. In Arizona, for example, she said, the public was so unhappy with the 1950s-era building that little was written for her to research in advance. When she got to Phoenix, officials were wary of sharing details that might fall into the hands of terrorists.
"There was some digging" in such places, she said, "and in others a lot of information, too much."
Thrane said she was not alone in wanting to visit all the capitols. In state after state, gift-shop clerks and museum curators said many travelers have vowed to complete similar treks.
Her surgeon in New York, who set her broken wrist injured in a fall early in the research project, scoffed at the book idea, saying most people would rather see the buildings on the Internet than buy a book, much less visit them.
"I said, 'No, no, it's not the same thing.'"
The book does have a few drawbacks, the result of the design approach and perhaps the fact that a Canadian, not an American, publisher was in charge.
There are virtually no pictures of people visiting the capitols or legislators in the business of lawmaking. There are no maps showing where the buildings are in the capital cities. And there are no historical photographs and just a handful of earlier capitols.
The buildings are covered in order of their construction, although many have undergone extensive redesign, reconstruction or restoration. Maryland's is first, and Alabama's is last. California's is No. 9.
Thrane is intrigued with the idea of turning her book into a documentary or multimedia DVD.
"It would be another way to bring people to them," she said. "It would be a way to bring statehouses to the forefront - and there are so many stories."
Such as the millions in graft associated with the late-19th century capitol project in Albany, N.Y.; the use of prison labor in 1839 to build the capitol in Columbus, Ohio (an order rescinded the following year after local laborers objected); and the tapestry depicting pineapples and coconut palms that hangs behind the speaker's podium in Honolulu.
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