The mystery of the limestone blocks buried underneath the courtyards of the state Capitol has perplexed Matt Hansen since they were first discovered four years ago.
With the help from computer drafting software, a clue buried deep in an old Lincoln newspaper and a collection of photographs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the capitol preservation architect thinks he may have cracked the case.
The stones, quarried along the Platte River and hauled overland to the Capitol site, were likely the foundation for a retaining wall at the top of a terrace that surrounded the second Capitol building finished in the waning days of 1888.
It wasn't until Hansen was able to change his perspective from the trench dug in the courtyards to prepare them for a multimillion-dollar landscaping project to a bird's-eye view of the grounds that he had what he described as "a light bulb moment."
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"It bugs you when you don't understand what you're finding, where you're finding it and why," said Hansen, who has been with the Office of the Nebraska Capitol Commission since 2010.
The graffiti remained on the limestone block, surviving the eventual razing of the second Capitol building in 1925 and burial underneath one of the current capitol's four interior courtyards.
"There must have been some reason why we were finding stacks of stones in the courtyard, but I hadn't been able to figure out what the pattern was until the landscape project," he added.
Using computer drafting equipment, Hansen overlaid the existing Capitol footprint with the layout from the second state Capitol he recreated from a 1921 map of the landscape and grounds created by the Department of Public Works.
Lines on the layout of the old Capitol where sidewalks were bordered by knee-high retaining walls intersect the four gardens of the existing Capitol precisely where as many as 150 blocks have been dug up in recent years.
"We were finding pieces that had been what I call architectural faces that appeared intended to be a surface stone in a wall," Hansen said, "but we were also finding a lot of what I call rubble."
Essentially, the stones used as a foundation were those damaged during construction and not usable on anything outward facing on the finished product.
To double-check his hunch, Hansen scoured old newspapers to see if there was any mention of the retaining walls being built and struck pay dirt once more.
The Dec. 13, 1888, Lincoln Evening Call, under a header called "Brevities" on Page 4, told readers: "The white lime stone coping around the terrace at the state house is now being put in place. The steps at the northwest corner of the north terrace are laid."
Rounding out his investigation, Hansen referenced UNL's Archives and Special Collections, which had several photos depicting the sidewalks -- pieces of which have also been found amid the rubble -- as well as a wider shot showing the structure topping a small elevation on the Capitol grounds.
Those clues, Hansen said, put the final piece to the mystery in place.
"The courtyards were these four little islands of semi-undisturbed soil from around the second building, which was kind of unusual in that regard," he said. "The fact that we have any pieces at all of the second building is unusual, and we are only finding them because they were undisturbed."
The forensic approach may have also solved why one limestone block tagged with an advertisement for a downtown Lincoln shoe store -- "Buy shoes at 1133 O Street" -- probably ended up underneath the Capitol courtyards.
Seeing how the block had been vandalized, builders probably relegated it to the foundation of the retaining wall on the north side of the building as work on the new Capitol was being completed, Hansen said.
So, the 1888 guerilla marketing campaign that used graffiti to draw customers to a discount shoe store on O Street, had likely not been seen by anyone before it was unearthed earlier this summer.
"We know the story about the painted signs, but we weren't sure how they got there," he said. "It's been a four-year puzzle."