The Capitol was lit red to celebrate the University of Nebraska’s Charter Day, February 15th……. and the celebration continues. The Office of the Capitol Commission illuminates the Capitol with colored light at the request of non-profit and not for profit groups to draw attention to their work. OCC’s policy allows four lightings per year, with the building lit for one evening or weekend, weather permitting. The weather allowed our staff to get onto the copper roof to install the red gels, but, the weather has not allowed them to get back up to remove the gels. Risk management and staff safety means the Capitol may be lit red for a few more days until the snow melts off the roof.
In celebration of the University’s 150th anniversary and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Nebraska Capitol Commission and the beginning of the process to create the monumental tower currently glowing red, here are a few ways the two are linked. Hartley Burr Alexander, thematic consultant for the Nebraska State Capitol was a professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska when he created inscriptions for the Capitol. Hartley Burr Alexander also wrote the inscriptions on Memorial Stadium, which like the Capitol was a monument to Nebraskans who had fought and died in the Great War.
Erwin Barbour, Director of the University of Nebraska State Museum from 1891-1941 provided Capitol mosaic artist Hildreth Meiere with sketches of Nebraska prehistoric creatures which she then translated into the black and white rotunda floor mosaics. Harry F. Cunningham, architect and draftsman with the Goodhue Associates, came to Lincoln as architect’s representative on the Nebraska State Capitol and was involved with the construction of the tower. In 1930, he became the first Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Nebraska. Several members of the Nebraska Hall of Fame, housed in the Capitol, have ties to the University of Nebraska. These include: General John Pershing, Commander of ROTC Cadets Willa Cather, Author Mari Sandoz, Author Nathan Pound, Botanist and Legal Scholar Charles Bessey, Botanist Grace Abbott, Social scientist Loren Eiseley, Anthropologist