We found out earlier this month that our restoration of the stained-glass laylight above the Great Stair at the Missouri State Capitol was honored with a 2026 Palladio Award for Craftsmanship. The Palladio Awards, presented by Traditional Building magazine, recognize excellence in traditional design and craftsmanship, and the recognition came in the commercial craftsmanship category. STRATA Architecture + Preservation led the preservation effort and submitted the project for recognition. STRATA's submission carried the project's working title — "An In-Depth Study of the Dismantling and Reconstruction of a Century-Old Stained Glass Laylight" — which is a fair description of what the work demanded.
Herman T. Schladermundt of New York designed and fabricated the laylight between 1920 and 1921. Earlier in his career Schladermundt had carried out the semi-circular stained glass windows in alcove of the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress. Many of the same design instincts carried into Jefferson City with state seals worked into the layered glass, decorative borders, and the careful balance of opacity and color that opalescent glass made possible. By the time we at Judson Studios encountered the laylight a century later, it was in an unsafe condition. For years, a small section of glass hung by a thread after being stepped on from above, and several panels had deflected several inches under their own weight, as shown in an infrared study of the laylight.
Most of the damaged glass we had to repair came from a structural steel system of bars added at some point in the laylight's life to support the failing glass. Someone attached the reinforcement bars through the leadwork itself using hundreds of small washers and threaded rods, which compounded the problem by breaking hundreds of pieces of glass. As part of our restoration, we helped develop a new framing support system that now sits below the stained glass, shifting the weight of the steel supports from above to below.
The largest panels in the laylight were the trapezoidal ones measuring nearly twelve feet across, some of the largest panels we have ever encountered. Removing them, lowering them to the ground, getting them outside the building, and crating them for transport was a massive challenge. We shipped them on molds to maintain their curvature, then used those molds to re-glaze them. We created seams in the panels, in keeping with their existing design, to separate each panel into five sections, and tied them together with copper ties during installation.
We removed the first panels in October 2022 and finished the reinstallation in September 2024. The project would not have come together without the direction of the STRATA team, led by Trudy Faulkner; stained glass consultant Julie Sloan; Prost Builders as general contractor; and the State of Missouri's project team, Robert Rehagen and Andrew Friedmeier, who were a pleasure to work with from start to finish. Award or no award, getting Schladermundt's laylight back into the ceiling of the Missouri State Capitol with the right support beneath it this time, is the kind of work that makes us the most proud.
