 Senators meet in the Senate Chamber to debate and vote on legislation impacting the lives of all Ohio residents. A major renovation in 1996 restored the chamber to its original nineteenth century design and updated the room with modern technology including state-of-the-art video cameras, an electronic voting system and laptops for the senators to view the bills on which they are voting. At one time, each senator’s desk would have served as his or her office in Columbus. Today, all senators have individual office space. Although the Senate President has a desk on the floor, he presides from his podium at the front of the chamber. The President’s mahogany and walnut chair and the marble dais are original to the building. The dais was carved on site from a large piece of marble that had to be moved into the building before the construction of the walls. 
Pete Fact :Statehouse lore suggests that longtime Senate Clerk Tom Bateman ordered the chamber balcony removed in the 1940s to prevent unruly spectators from throwing things on to the senators below.
Pete Fact :While the Ohio House of Representatives can boast that former President Abraham Lincoln spoke in the House Chamber, legend has it that before  he was president, Lincoln danced on the Senate floor. Some sources suggest that during Lincoln's 1859 visit to Columbus as a presidential candidate, he attended a Statehouse ball in which he shared a dance with the lovely Kate Chase, daughter of former Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase, who would later serve in Lincoln's cabinet. As the story goes, the dance was cut short due to a jealous Mary Todd Lincoln. However, many, many years later, Statehouse lore suggests that the two may have tried to finish their dance. At the turn of the twentieth century, former Ohio Senator and Governor Joseph B. Foraker heard waltz music blaring through the locked doors of the Senate Chamber while he was working in his Senate office late one night. When he looked through the chamber window, he saw a tall, slender man with a petite woman in a Victorian-age hoop skirt. Foraker identified the pair as Lincoln and Ms. Chase, but unfortunately, no one else was there to corroborate his story. |
Saturday, July 31, 2010