You never cease to make the ordinary look extraordinary.

While I can’t speak with certainty; this building probably provides steam for heating purposes for the government buildings downtown. So, this plant probably distributes steam to all the legislative, judicial and executive buildings that are located downtown. (Many of which you have taken amazing pictures of!)

Having worked in the Raney building when maintainence was having some HVAC problem, I can tell you for sure that steam heat is piped from this facility all the way down to Fayetteville street for many of the government buildings use. This means that somewhere underground there are a few blocks of steam tunnels to support the pipelines. Of course with the security paranoia due to current state of world events, I doubt if you can even get to see a map of them, much less publish any photos or give out details.

As many colleges know, its often cheaper to setup one large central boiler facility and pipe the heat to all the buildings than to provide each one with its own much smaller heat plant. Some of them even generate their own electricity this way. It would be smart protection in case a disaster takes down the power grid, but I doubt if this facility generates power since there already are large backup generators in the building designated as the state’s disaster HQ. I won’t say which one that is, but the big satellite uplink dish and many shortwave antennas on its roof give it away. I think the Legislature building has its own generators too (and hopefully some kind of bunker ) so it can function during an outage as well. The rest of the downtown complex isn’t that critical.

The Legislature building also has a nice restaurant in its basement. Ask at the visitor desk about it or if you have a state Id badge you can just walk in. Prices are reasonable and selection is pretty good. Its better than most downtown lunch choices pricewise and deserves a photo & a mention.