Some want Maryland State House dome returned to multicolor scheme

Imagine driving into Annapolis along Rowe Boulevard or sailing into the city's harbor, glancing up toward the tiered State House dome, and seeing that it's colored not in the brick red and Colonial white you've known your entire life, but in lemon gold, muted blue and honey bordering on apricot.

Sound like something from a weird dream? It's not. When George Washington strode inside to resign his commission in 1783, when the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris there, ending the Revolutionary War, and when the British sailed up the Chesapeake to sack Baltimore in 1814, those were the colors they saw.

So found a team of workers as they stripped away paint layers during an $800,000 maintenance project this summer.

The discovery sparked a debate that has been raging in Annapolis, pitting preservationists against each other: When workers get to the repainting stage of the seven-month project, which look should they give it: cozy Americana or radical pastel?

Some said it would be ill-advised, even rash, to employ the crazier colors. "Would it be entertaining? Yes. … We found no way to justify it," says J. Rodney Little, director of the Maryland Historical Trust, which decides such things....