STATE CAPITALS AND STATE PRIDE

...In Europe, the attitude of the people is quite different...

...This spirit may be expected to show itself in a variety of ways...

...2) to secure for public use, either as highways or open spaces, the most important lake frontages which are the crowning features of Madison's remarkable natural scenery, and (3) to make Madison more and more of an educational City through the establishment therein of the various forms, forces, and expressions of science, art, and culture...

...The unit for the expression of this kind of idealism, this kind of patriotism, is to be found not so much in the Nation on the one hand or the Cities on the other, but in the sovereign States...

...The Capital City of every kingdom, petty principality, or dukedom wh:ch corresponds much mora closely to our State capitals than to the National Capital, is embellished with splendid palaces, spacious gardens, museums, wide streets and promenades, art galleries, fine sculpture, theatres, and opera houses...

...Their areas are too limited, their population too shifting, their primary purposes too commercial...

...Lucerne, Zurich, Geneva, in Switzerland...

...This applies first of all to the State House itself, its setting and approaches, but it applies with equal force to those other features of the City that can only be appropriately developed through the power and cooperation of the State...

...And by the term 'provincialism' I shall mean, first, the tendency of such a province to possess its own customs and ideals...

...Europe's Enlightened Policy CALL THE ROLL of our State Capitals in New England, along the Atlantic seaboard, in the South, in the Middle West, on the Pacific coast...

...The most natural outlet for this expression will be the City of Madison, the permanent seat of government and education...

...MADISON, like other State Capitals, will remain a City of only ordinary public convenience and appearance until the State embraces its peculiar opportunity and assumes its legitimate responsibility...

...There is no question that both the public and private wealth of Wisconsin will soon seek to express itself more definitely in art and the higher forms of education...

...although the Federal Capital will increasingly win the people's pride and affection...

...Certainly, the most favorable political unit in this country is the State and the place for the people of a State to express their high traditions and their devotion to all the finer things of life is in the Capital City of the State...

...The Nation is too large, too varied, and the relation of the whole people to a single City like Washington too indirect and distant, to entirely satisfy this desire...

...The larger financial resources, credit and authority of the State, must somehow be secured...

...Why Not Create a "Model Capitol...

...Among the art," wrote Charles Eliot Norton," the one that has alike the closest and widest relations to the life of a people—to its wants, habits, and culture—and which gives the fullest and most exact expression to its moral dispositions, its imagination and its intelligence is that of architecture...

...and thirdly, the love and pride which leads the inhabitants of a province to cherish as their own these traditions, beliefs, and aspirations...

...This is not a wise and comprehensive way of making large public improvements...

...Is there yet a single one where the legitimate pride of the State has found expression or where the State has used the opportunity afforded by its Capital City to hand on and advance civilization...

...Although it is many times the size of the first modest structure, the ground in which it is to be set is the same as that for the original Capitol, constructed sixty years ago, and outside of this one limited block of ground, the State has taken no steps whatever to control or improve the surroundings to its great building or the approaches to it...

...BUT THERE ARE still other features of Madison that can only be appropriately developed by the power and cooperation of the State Government, features, too, that affect vitally the serviceability of Madison as a Capital City...

...But I am convinced from observation and study that a dignified and appropriate development of the City as a State Capital is impossible by a group of 25,000 people with very limited powers and an annual budget for all municipal purposes of less than half a million dollars...

...Education will thus contribute toward making Madison a model City and Madison itself in turn as a City will become one of the greatest educational forces of the State, for art is not only the flowering of civilization, it is also its seed...

...For example, the State should take whatever action is necessary (1) to establish all the main thoroughfares of Madison not only within the present City limits, which are narrow, but more specially in those outlying sections which must, sooner or later, form an integral part of the City...

...Florence, Venice, Naples, in Italy...

...I believe, therefore, that the State of Wisconsin will lose one of its greatest opportunities if it fails to conceive of Madison, its Capital City, as an educational and art center as well as the seat of the Government, a center that will provide adequately for the expansion of the University and for many fine and varied expressions of art and culture in the City itself...

...Architecture will certainly be strongly influenced, because of its intimate relation to everyday life...

...The State of Wisconsin is now erecting a new and fitting Capital building, which will cost six million dollars or more...

...Yet aside from the construction for the purposes of State Government of a single building, even the grounds and approaches to which are usually altogether inadequate, the various commonwealths have done practically nothing to exalt their Capital City above other cities or to express in it the achievements of the past and the aspirations of the future...

...For that purpose it was selected, for that first settled, for that it should be planned and replanned as new needs and changing conditions and rising standards require...

...Whether the State of Wisconsin should assume some special control over the City of Madison or whether is form of government should be changed at all, I am not prepared to say...

...It will be seen in new and larger applications of the science of engineering and the art of landscape architecture to the construction of streets, bridges, and all other forms of public works...

...The Cities are an even less appropriate unit...

...The true aims of the theatre and of the university, as has recently been pointed out, are substantially the same, viz., to develop man's powers as a social being and to counteract rather than copy the defects of the civilizations of the day...

...Museums, libraries, public gardens, parks, and beautiful natural scenery will also be among these new educational forces and it is hoped the theatre, whose claims for public support are at last beginning to be recognized in this country...

...Its main function is to serve as a State Capital...

...are examples of what Capital Cities abroad have been made through the influence and at the cost of the people of an entire State...

...State Capitals and State Pride Wisconsin's Opportunity By JOHN NOLEN JOSIAH ROYCE, philosopher, educator, and author, has pointed out in a recent essay the need for the people of a given section or State to set up, hold, and express in appropriate ways their particular traditions and ideals...

...The case of Washington is clear and convincing and there is a strong analogy between the relation of the Nation to the improvement of Washington, and that of the State to the improvement of Madison...

...Three Duties for Wisconsin...

...No more impossible is it for the little handful of people living in Madison now or even the larger population likely to live there later, to make a worthy State Capital than it was for the people of Washington to advance that City to a respectable place among the nations of the world...

...secondly, the totality of these customs and ideals themselves...

...Cambridge, Mass...

...For me, then," he says, "a province shall mean any one part of a national domain, which is, geographically and socially, sufficiently unified to have a true consciousness of its own unity, to feel a pride in its own ideals and customs, and to possess a a sense of its distinction from other parts of the country...

...Such embellishment has proved a source of new wealth and it is well known that travellers spend millions of dollars and make long visits to these cities thus justifying in another way the wisdom of this enlightened policy...

...Surely, there is as much reason for a State like Wisconsin to endeavor to establish a model City as a model farm...

...It gives the impression that while Wisconsin may build a dignified and appropriate Capitol, the State is too poor or too petty in its views to surround the building properly and to treat the approaches to it so as to permit the great structure to be seen and appreciated at its true value...

...Dresden, Munich, Frankfurt, in Germany...

...Madison, Wisconsin, is an illustration of a city that might easily become a worthy expression of the pride and glory of a great State...