mail: Bill Thayer

Italiano

Help

Up

Home

State Legislature at Work

The top floor of the Tennessee State Capitol (not counting what small floors there must be in the cupola tower) is the Legislative Floor. Compared to the Executive Floor beneath, it is well lit by outside light — if we like, we may indulge ourselves and view the difference as a metaphor of how government works.

	The Senate Chamber serves as the place of deliberation for just 33 Senators. As we might expect, the room has something of the flavor of a private club. [ 1 page, nnn photos ]
	The House Chamber, on the other hand, was designed to accommodate 99 Representatives; it's a much larger space with high ceilings, a prominent electronic vote tally board. It also sits squarely in the axis of the building, whereas the other body meets in a side room; since the two chambers could easily have been set in equally axial positions at opposite ends of the Capitol, the architecture rather strikingly incorporates a clear populist bias. [ 1 page, nnn photos ]
	The making of laws, ideally, requires good informational input: the Old Law Library, a particularly handsome room, still occasionally serves both houses of the Legislature. [ 1 page, nnn photos ]

So why does this page lead off with the railing of a staircase? On July 19, 1866 became the first Confederate state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, and thus to be readmitted to the Union. The zzz

Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
UP TO:	interior	Capitol	Nashville	American Scrapbook	Home
OFF SITE:	Official site	Tennessee State page	M. A. Sullivan's site
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information.