Mark Greenough leads a group through the atrium of the Virginia State Capitol earlier this year.
Mark Greenough is often introduced as the person who knows everything there is to know about the Virginia State Capitol. He’s not comfortable with that description, but, “Whenever the opportunity arises,” he says, “I’ll admit to being the guy who wants to know everything about the Capitol.”
Since 2002 Greenough has directed the dozen or so part-time Capitol guides who take visitors on a historical journey through its marble halls. With what he calls “an innate and ongoing curiosity,” Greenough has made it his job to discover all that he can about the building Thomas Jefferson designed in 1785.
On a recent visit to Capitol Square, the air rang with hammering and construction sounds as the grandstands rose in preparation for Glenn Youngkin’s Jan. 15 gubernatorial inauguration.
Greenough, an Arizona native, says he moved east “to find American history — and, man, I found it!” He was introduced to the Capitol building as a student of American history at Virginia Commonwealth University during the 1980s. He later furthered his studies in history museum management, historiography and American history at the College of William & Mary.
He describes feeling “an interest as well as an obligation” to tour the Capitol and remembers three things from his first visit: the “stealth dome” not in Jefferson’s original plans but added soon after completion as “a local option upgrade,” the remarkable presence of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s marble statue of George Washington — “It’s a meticulous masterpiece,” he declares — and meeting Charlotte Troxell, then the Capitol tours supervisor, who held the position for 27 years.
“She brought a real sense of gravitas to the whole proceedings,” Greenough recalls, “and a stately sense of interest mixed with importance.” Troxell died at age 99 in 2019.
Greenough says he gained greater appreciation for the Capitol as “a repeat customer.” He returned often during 15 years as a public historian in the private sector, where he made history-based presentations for museums, schools and historic sites, sometimes dressed as someone who’d stepped out of a past century, other times dressed in coat and tie.
Then he saw the 2002 job posting for tour supervisor and historian at the Virginia Capitol.
“I was working ‘eight days a week,’ including most weekends, and constantly on the road,” Greenough explains. Besides more reasonable hours and better benefits, he already had a good relationship with Capitol staff. “I thought, ‘Well, wouldn't it be nice to continue talking about four centuries of Virginia history with a wide-ranging audience from all over the world and even get paid to do it?’ ” he says.
Greenough got the job, and he descended into a rich vein of history that he’s eagerly mined ever since.
The earliest Capitol guidebook that Greenough found dated to 1948. Subsequent editions were issued for the edification of visitors, and to guide the guides, including one written by Troxell. When Greenough arrived, the most recent booklet was nearly out of stock. “It was time to reprint, revise or renew,” he says, “and so I took that as one of my first opportunities to further investigate the Capitol story.”
Greenough joined a committee of three to revise the guidebook and then, in 2007, helped to create the informative Capitol brochure that has also undergone many editions.
The present training manual for guides is, Greenough says, a constant work in progress. “I don’t even put numbers on the pages to illustrate the fact that this is an evolving, living, learning document.”
Greenough demonstrates the acoustics in the Virginia Senate chamber.
He compares the Capitol’s paid part-time cadre of guides to the “citizen lawmakers” who also roam the halls. In both cases, they bring to their jobs a wide and important variety of experiences. Capitol guides come from backgrounds in education, history, architecture, city and state government, heritage tourism, the national park service, and so on. “This collective experience is important to our work here,” he says.
The building itself multitasks. Beyond operating as a seat for the Virginia General Assembly, the oldest elected and deliberative body in the Western Hemisphere, the Capitol is by turns a fine arts museum and tourist attraction, a civics classroom for students of all levels, and an after-hours meeting venue for nongovernment organizations. Portions of the rental fees provide some revenue for the Virginia Capitol Foundation.
Pre-pandemic, the Virginia Capitol received 100,000 annual visitors. “They come from all over the world, many foreign nations and the six continents — not one yet from Antarctica,” Greenough says. For those interested in U.S. history, the Virginia Capitol is a must-see destination.
The free Capitol tour is about one hour. Greenough has developed thematic variations, focusing on the Capitol’s architecture, the legal history associated with the building, women at the Capitol or African Americans there — from those who built and maintained the place to those who have served in the chambers as legislators.
The Capitol building is a star. Jefferson’s 1785 design resonates today — he worked on it remotely while serving as ambassador to France. Inspired by the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, a first-century A.D. Roman temple, Jefferson presented a complete break from Colonial or Georgian style while hearkening back to the Roman Republic revered by the founders.
The Capitol opened in 1788, and Jefferson’s design is today emulated by countless municipal buildings and institutions of education, finance and faith.
In the upper lobby of the underground entrance, which was constructed from 2004 to 2007, the bronze statue of Jefferson, created in 2012 by Ivan Schwartz/Studio EIS, holds a large rectangular paper. Greenough shares that in the statue’s original plan, visitors ascending the stairs into the historic building would look down and over Jefferson’s shoulder to a blank page. “But I rose my hand in a meeting,” he recalls, “and suggested we put something appropriate there.”
Onto the paper went a reproduction of Jefferson’s own architectural drawing of the Capitol’s western elevation.
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