Linda Falkenstein
Jim Werlein (left) takes care of wood doors at the Capitol; August is the cruelest month. Bubba, Rep. Ed Brooks’ prize cow, stays put with a single nail and a french hook.
Custodians staff the Capitol 365 days a year. “We want to ensure the Capitol is well maintained and runs great for folks, everyone, every day,” says building superintendent Jason Rittel. While the building closes to the public at 6 p.m. and re-opens at 8 a.m., it is “never closed for a day,” notes Rittel. That can “make maintenance challenging.” So can the building’s relatively open architecture, which allows visitors to “wander throughout, unencumbered in most cases.”
“It sees a lot of use and abuse,” adds Rittel. Most of the cleaning gets done by evening custodians from 4:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Three groups of workers maintain the building: mechanics, specialty craft trade staff and custodial. Mechanics take care of what’s often behind the scenes — pumps, coils, air handlers — but also visible concerns, like repair of an antique wood chair that’s coming apart at the seams, and practical ones like replacing light bulbs.
Trade staff include carpenters, plumbers, steamfitters, electricians, a mason and a decorative painter, who, among other things, takes care of gold and silver gilding and stenciling.
“Given the age of the building and its historic nature and value, a lot of what our mechanic staff does is unique,” says Rittel. “It’s the day-in and day-out routine to them, but compared to other mechanics of the same job title at other state office buildings, it’s a totally different ball game.”
Take, for instance, the doors at the Capitol. “At other places, they’re cookie-cutter. Here they’re true solid pieces of timber,” says Rittel. “That means not only that they’re very heavy, but that they’re much more susceptible to expansion and contraction with humidity and temperature fluctuation.”
Facilities maintenance specialist Jim Werlein deems August the worst month for sticking doors: “They swell up even with the air conditioning.”
Werlein terms himself “jack of all trades, master of none.” He’s been at the Capitol for six years; before that he worked at the governor’s mansion. He takes care of the three kinds of doors in the building – wrought iron, leather and wood.
“These monsters are actually pretty easy compared to the wood,” he says, gesturing at the imposing, gate-like, wrought iron doors. The leather ones — found at the entrance to the Senate, Assembly and Supreme Court chambers and the parlors — are the most difficult, in part because their spring pack is in the floor and not (as is more usual) on the door itself. Also, the spring packs are original 100-year-old equipment that isn’t made anymore.
The well-used revolving doors on the ground level don’t actually need much fixing. “They have held up,” says Werlein. The biggest maintenance issue with the revolvers are the “vertical and horizontal sweeps” that plug the gap between the door and the floor or door frame. These are custom-made at Madison’s Gallagher Tent and Awning. Werlein points to the part of the door that clasps the sweeps; it’s cleverly mounted to the door proper with screws and easily removed. Check it out the next time you cut through the Capitol.
Original instructions for the maintenance of the revolving doors are framed and in the basement of the building, partly as an interesting artifact — but staff does consult them from time to time.
Perhaps the most unexpected task on Werlein’s to-do list is hanging everything from quilts to dead animals in legislators’ offices: “Deer heads, turkey mounts, a bear rug, a cow head.” Hanging needs to minimize impact on walls.
His favorite mount is Bubba, the prize cow in Rep. Ed Brooks’ office (hung by Werlein with just a single nail and a french hook). Hanging the bear rug was actually less difficult than some quilts, he says. Next up: hanging an alligator mount. Says Werlein: “Sometimes you just have to wing it.”
