A Whirlwind Tour of our Connecticut State Buildings

Today we went on a free guided tour program that took us to the Legislative Office Building, the State Capitol, the Museum of Connecticut History and the Supreme court courtroom in a whirlwind 2 1/2 hour tour. Our first tour guide had us step lively to be able to fit in all she wanted to say before we had to go to the next program. The tours were informative and very interesting and we are glad to have been educated by the knowledgeable docents, but we would like to go back one day when we don't feel so rushed and do a self-guided tour. I didn't have time to photograph things the way I would have liked. It was hard to capture the awesome beauty of the architecture and gorgeous designs and statues as we rushed through, but here are what I was able to take.

These first ones are of the Legislative Office Building.

The floor.
 



Another time, I would take more pictures of these beautiful cherry wood doors. The middle panels were different in each door. This one had our state bird, the American robin.
 



Tribute to the armed forces.

From there we went to the State Capitol. Our first stop was this beautiful angel statue which one day will be placed on top of the building. It is called the Genius of Connecticut. The original one was removed when it became loose and during
the war was melted down. When this angel is put on top, we will be able to say that we touched her.

This is the view above the angel:

 

 

Next the docent spoke about our state hero as we gathered around the statue of Nathan Hale.

 

Looking up to the ceiling.
 

Then she took us to the statue of Prudence Crandall, our state heroine.

 

 

 

The rest of our Capitol tour:



Each state received a model of the Liberty Bell in 1950 to mark the start of the U.S Savings Bond Drive to raise money to help set off the national debt.

As a final treat our docent had each one of us sit in the Charter Oak Chair and took our picture.

 

From there we rushed over to the Museum of Connecticut History. There a tour guide gave an interesting presentation about Connecticut inventions. He only mentioned a few since there have been over 100,000! He mentioned things like helicopters and submarines to hamburgers, sub sandwiches, silly putty, the cotton gin and sewing machine to name a few.

When we finished, we had a few minutes to tour the rest of the museum.

Here is the Charter Oak:



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Pictures of some of the other exhibits there:

 

Civil War quilt

Voting machine



Colt firearms (this is a portion of a huge display)

Our final stop was the Supreme Court courtroom where Justice Richard Robinson addressed the visitors.

I wish this picture on the ceiling came out better. I appreciated the symbolism of this painting. The woman is reading to the boy from the book of knowledge. The spirits are bringing down torches to bring the knowledge to the dark ignorance and superstitions.

Thus ended our tour. Just from looking at these pictures, imagine seeing all this in a little over 2 hours. We will go back one day when we have time to see more, relish the history and beauty of the buildings. It was a treat that these buildings are free to tour, and parking in the legislative parking lot was also free. We enjoyed a reasonably priced lunch in the cafeteria. It is worth the trip and should be a must for all Connecticut residents.