Florida – 

The White Tower

The current Florida capitol building is a 22-story tower built in the 1970s. It is the center of the new capitol complex that spreads out symmetrically on both its sides. Directly in front is the old capitol, which has been restored to its 1902 appearance and now houses a museum.

Old and New Capitols
image courtesy of
Roz and Roy Simpson

The capitol is most often pictured with the old capitol in front, but when photographed from the other side, the old capitol might not appear at all.

New Capitol
image courtesy of James Messer, TallahasseeTour.com

An Association
The association for the Florida and North Dakota capitol towers is written at the bottom of this page, after the North Dakota section. Since they are both relatively simple towers, I didn't find unique features for two separate associations, so it was necessary to combine them to avoid confusion.

Louisiana — The Candle

The Candle
The tower of the Louisiana capitol is tapered in several stages starting at the 22nd floor. At the very top is a cupola, or lantern, which is the more appropriate term in this case since it contains a light and acts very much like a lantern at night. The building's shape with the lantern on top is like a tall, tapered candle.

An Association
Candles are used frequently in the USA, most notably at parties. A dinner party especially would include candles tapered much like this capitol is. What is probably the biggest party this country regularly holds? Mardis Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana, of course. (Keep in mind the capital of Louisiana is Baton Rouge.) So: candle, party, Mardis Gras, Louisiana.

This association for identifying the Louisiana capitol through New Orleans' Mardis Gras was planned since early in 2004. Now that I am adding it to my site in September of 2005, it is with great sadness and many prayers that New Orleans will rebound from the destruction of Katrina and the following flood, and again be the gracious host of the greatest party in the nation.

image courtesy of
Louisiana Office of Tourism

North Dakota – 

The Skyscraper on the Prairie

This capitol is certainly surprising for a plains state with lots of wide open space and no really big cities. Who would expect a tower there? In North Dakota, they refer to their tower as "The Skyscraper on the Prairie." It is the tallest building in the state.

image courtesy of
The Real North Dakota Project

Very often, pictures of this capitol only include the tower and not the sections to the left of it as shown here. There is also a large addition to the right of the tower now, but it hardly shows from behind the trees.

Another thing that makes this capitol unusual is the lack of ornamentation. Anything unnecessary from the original plan was omitted because it was built during the depression and there simply weren't funds. The previous capitol had been destroyed by fire, and the new capitol had to be built in hard times.

The original plans had included ornamentation. Some pains were taken to be sure the planned sculptures could be added later with minimal work and cost, but that hasn't happened.

The Fact
Here's an interesting fact: Rugby, North Dakota is the geographical center of North America. That means if the continent were a flat plate of the same thickness and density all over, it could balance on Rugby, North Dakota, its center of gravity. They have erected a monument, a cairn, to mark the spot.

The Fiction
(Sorry, I just had to do this.)
Let's get imaginative and make this even more interesting and memorable, shall we?

What if a giant plate-spinning juggler in a giant circus was spinning the flat continent on a pole? Now there's an image! Whoa!

Picture Rugby hardly moving, the cairn just rotating in place while the rest of the continent is whizzing around! People are getting thrown out and away from the center by centrifugal force; we have to build walls at our borders to keep our citizens from being thrown into Canada and Mexico and off the edges.

Where do they all end up? They stop first at a border wall, but from there they all flow to the place that is farthest from the center of the spin but still inside our walls, and that is the southern tip of Florida.

We can't just leave everyone in Florida! We need to redistribute all these folks, to get them out of Florida and back home, wherever it is. The easiest plan is to get them all to North Dakota and let them flow back toward their homes from there, take advantage of the energy from the spin.

We need a transportation system based on cables so all passenger compartments are safely attached to the spinning ground. An above-ground cable car system like a closed-car ski lift would be perfect; a sturdy, solid, cable car line suspended from towers from Florida to North Dakota.

To anchor our cable system, at each end we need a really tall, solid tower, a post-like structure. About 20 floors of height should do it, and some good width for strength.

Guess what? The capitol buildings of Florida and North Dakota are just right for the job! Solid skyscrapers, 22 and 19 floors respectively, shaped rather like posts, and built for public use.

Hope that made you giggle.

Back to Facts
The capital of North Dakota is Bismarck, not Rugby, and the capital of Florida, Tallahassee, is in northern Florida, not on the southern tip.

There is a simple way to tell which tower is which. The North Dakota tower has a vertical center line that can be imagined as dividing the building into two parts, just like the state's name is two words, while Florida's capitol is definitely one solid piece, as is Florida's name.