The more we know about a building like the Virginia State Capitol, the more it comes to life for us. Enriching the meaning of a public building like the striking white edifice in Richmond adds to the citizenship experience of all Virginians, for in a real sense the capitol belongs to everyone who resides in the commonwealth.

The information we receive from brochures and tour guides upon visiting a famous building generally centers on that structure alone, i.e., its particular architectural details and singular history. Although these insights are helpful, a building will take on even more life if it is related to other comparable buildings. There are, of course, 49 other state capitols in America, and similarities and differences between them and Virginia's capitol are informative.

The capitol in Richmond is not Virginia's first. As in many states, the seat of government migrated from town to town. The colony's headquarters was initially at Jamestown and later Williamsburg, and it moved to Richmond after the Revolution at the insistence of Governor Thomas Jefferson. In contrast to migration of the capital city in all other states, however, in Virginia the moves did not result from regional economic rivalries but from military safety considerations. Jefferson believed that having the new state's capital farther inland would make it safer from British attack, probably a warranted assumption.

In addition to determining the capitol's location, Jefferson designed the center portion of today's building, along with Charles-Louis Clerisseau. This was the first and only time that the principal architect of a state capitol was a founding father of the country.

Initially, Jefferson contemplated placing three government buildings on Shockoe Hill, one for each branch of government--as was later done in the District of Columbia. He later changed his mind and left instructions for one capitol to be built, whose design was to be inspired by a Roman temple in France that stands to this day, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes. Emulating architectural models from antiquity was not unusual for capitol design in frontier America, but Virginia's capitol is the only one copied quite literally from a specific ancient building.

In New England the new states created after the Revolution tended to call their government headquarters "state houses." This designation was logical in view of prior terms such as "colony house" and "town house." In Virginia, however, the word "Capitoll" had been introduced some 75 years earlier by Governor Francis Nicholson as the name for the new burgesses building in Williamsburg. Jefferson made it clear that the same word should be used for the new state headquarters in Richmond, as well as the "Congress House" then being planned in Washington. This verbal preference of Jefferson and others of the time was based not on whim but a desire to associate the infant republics being created with the glories of the Republican Rome, whose Capitoline Hill was the site of two key temples. The Virginia terminology was subsequently used by most states of the Union.

The Maison Carrée from which Jefferson's design was copied kept the Virginia capitol from being a "standard" American state capitol architecturally, although additional construction completed in 1906 brought it somewhat more in line. The original portico of columns and triangular pediment or gable did not include stairs. Entry to the building was gained by modest steps at the sides of the building.

When the present front steps and front doorway were added after the turn of the century, the building was transformed from a temple to be observed on Shockoe Hill to a public building inviting admission of citizens through the front door. With few exceptions--such as the Pantheon--Roman temples did not have domes, and hence the roofline of Jefferson's capitol was topped only by a few small chimneys and no vertically thrusting dome as had become the standard practice for state capitols by the 1830s and 1840s. However, Jefferson was architecturally prescient in placing a rotunda, or large public space transecting several floors, in the center of the building. As in most state capitols, this became the symbolic inner heart of the building and a natural crossroads for pedestrian traffic. For two centuries the center of this fine space has been occupied by the great Houdon marble statue of George Washington. Interestingly, a bronze copy of this work stands before the South Carolina State House.

The wings added on each side of the original Jefferson core in 1906 also brought the Virginia capitol more into conformity with 19^th century statehouse design practice in that the doctrine of bicameralism was now clearly expressed in the structure's external configuration. The Virginia legislative wings are small and set back, however, permitting the building's original temple front to retain its dominant forward thrust. This arrangement contrasts with the more common lengthwise presentation of statehouse profiles on their hilltops and river bluffs around the country.

Spatial organization inside the Virginia capitol also has its unusual aspects. Originally the Senate chamber was in the front of the Jeffersonian core and the House of Delegates at the rear. Although the old Delegates chamber is much larger than the old Senate, its rear position suggests inferiority. Today the two chambers evidence equivalent status in their same-sized wings, although the Senate interior is smaller than its House counterpart, a difference made logical by the Senate's smaller membership.

The Virginia State Capitol is also unusual in that the governor's office is on the third floor of the building, two stories above the legislative chambers. Typically the reverse is true in the American statehouse: the governor is on the ground or first floor while the legislative bodies occupy a high-ceilinged, richly decorated "piano nobile" one or two stories above. The reason for Virginia's arrangement (also seen in Maryland) is probably the age of the building--as an 18^th century capitol, it was seen as primarily a legislative hall only, with provision for a weak chief executive a secondary consideration. Still today, "the third floor" is code for the office of the governor in Richmond, and the state constitution refers to when the governor "sends down" to the General Assembly the chief executive's amendments to bills.

With respect to the layout of the legislative chambers, the rooms are typical in that separate desks are provided each member, with these desks arranged in an arc facing the rostrum. This arrangement gives each member more status than do benches, as in the House of Commons, or bench seats, as in the U.S. House of Representatives. The floors carry a small incline toward the well of the house, but the desks are not steeply raked as in an amphitheater, the case in many European parliaments. Together the individual desks and relatively flat topography of the room suggest an individualized, deliberative mode of conduct.

In one interesting way the chamber arrangements of the Virginia General Assembly are unique, however. It is the only state legislature in the country where, in both chambers, the Republicans are permanently seated on the presider's right and the Democrats on the presider's left. Curiously, this arrangement is in keeping with traditional Right-Left ideological seating in Europe and the reverse of practice in most states and in the U.S. Congress.

As mentioned, the rotunda of the Virginia capitol is a crossroads of traffic on the first floor of the building. The open nature of corridors intersecting the rotunda from four directions helps create natural channels for spontaneous interaction by all those who enter the building. This is typical of American capitols, except for those few statehouses--such as in Florida and Louisiana--where sufficiency of interior space depends on building height rather than breadth. When this occurs, a shift to elevator usage instead of ambulatory movement reduces spontaneous social interaction.

On the ground floor of the Virginia capitol much spontaneous interaction occurs as well, abetted by the presence of doorways at the rear of the central core and out the two wings. Another major physical generator of interaction on the ground level is the building's snack bar, Chicken's. Located in a 30- by 35-foot space near the midpoint of the ground floor, this venerable institution has become, over the years, a casual meeting place of the politically powerful and plain citizens alike. Unlike most capitol snack bars around the country, it has tables on which to eat; and unlike all capitol restaurants around the nation, its round tables are small, chest-height, and crowded together. This physical environment forces diners to eat and talk together, whether acquainted or not. The low vaulted ceilings of the old Jeffersonian core add to the place's sense of crowded intimacy, especially at lunchtime. Once again, the Virginia State Capitol is interestingly different from other statehouses, in this case in an unexpectedly democratic way.

Charles T. Goodsell, who teaches in Virginia Tech's Center for Public Administration and Policy, recently completed a book on the American statehouse.