HARTFORD — Since it was first put on display in December 2009, the modern bronze copy of “The Genius of Connecticut,” with its steely face, prominent wings and flowing robes, has been a major attraction on the daily tours of the State Capitol.

While thousands have seen the 18-foot-tall sculpture up close and personal, the goal of Capitol historians and preservationists has been to put the replica atop the gold dome. The original ruled over the building’s Gothic architecture from 1878 until damage to its base was found after the Hurricane of 1938, when the statue was dismantled and removed piece-by-piece. 

Now, though, the discovery of a lack of interior framing inside the 5,500-pound daemon, the allegorical protector of Connecticut, is making the administrators who run the 14-acre State Capitol complex worry whether it would be safe to put the sculpture atop the 274-foot-tall gold dome after a $50 million rehabilitation of the building begins late this year.

“There’s no skeletal body inside, so it’s not stable enough to go up on top of the Capitol,” said Brian Pencz, facilities administrator for the Office of Legislative Management in Hartford. “That is what the X-rays that we had done show.”

The half-million dollars budgeted to hoist “The Genius” atop the dome — with its crown of oak leaves representing the state tree, a wreath of dried flowers in her right hand and mountain laurel, the state flower, in the left — could increase dramatically if the 20 pieces have to be taken apart, an armature inserted and the pieces welded back together, he said.

That’s the issue before the State Capitol Preservation and Restoration Commission. The advisory panel, along with the Office of Legislative Management, considers a remounted “Genius” the culmination of the $50 million cleaning and repair program at the Capitol that includes applying a 3/1000ths-inch of gold leaf on the dome and rehabilitating 522 windows.

That cost doesn’t include necessary repairs to the original base of the “Genius,” above the dome in the area called the “lantern” of the Capitol, itself a tribute to the nation’s role in the American Civil War. 

Complicating the work on the “Genius” is that the Polich Tallix Foundry of Rock Tavern, N.Y. — where it was cast, based on the 2007 advanced laser imaging of the plaster copy of the original that resides in the Capitol’s north lobby — has been sold to another company.

Pencz recently told the Capitol Preservation Commission that it will have to wait a year or more to see whether adding a new skeleton or armature is even possible.

“I reached out to that company and a competitor of theirs to have them come in and look at it so we can at least get the process started, and I have only heard back from one and they’re out until mid-summer next year,” he said. 

State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, co-chair of the legislative Appropriations Committee who leads the Preservation Commission, said she would like to know the cost of a skeletal component for the “Genius.” 

“I think it’s important for us to kind of get there. Personally, I’d like to see the ‘Genius’ get back where it belongs,” she said. “That’s where I’ve been along and I’d like to see that happen.”

Before the 1938 hurricane, the original statue had previously been hauled down in 1903, for about a year, when officials were concerned about damage from high winds, according to a 2021 article by Central Connecticut State University Professor Matthew Warshauer.

Warshauer, in a phone interview Monday, said he would also like to see the new version of the “Genius” atop the dome. But Warshauer also said he’d prefer that a statewide, grassroots citizen-fundraising effort pay for it, rather than state funds. He cited the importance of civic engagement, particularly in this semiquincentennial year of celebrating — and discussing — the 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“I wholeheartedly support raising the ‘Genius’ to the center of the Capitol and its towering heights,” Warshauer said. “But what will such an action mean if it’s done only by the General Assembly and not the public? Today we have to decide what our symbols are and what they can mean. It’s up to the people to decide, with the help of civic leaders and historians. It’s more meaningful if done with intention by the people and different groups of people.”