It might not dig up Huey Long’s infamous “deduct box” but in LPB’s documentary, This Old State House, viewers across the state see treasures just as valuable—and just as hidden.

“There are details on the building you would not believe,” says Producer Jeff Duhé, “I like the raccoon and crawfish carved into a tiny square on the 22nd floor. Now, how was anyone supposed to see that?”

But that’s part of the wonder, that artists who decorated a building more akin to sculpture than office tower included such tiny details. Each relief, each icon, had a meaning. What the 1932 meaning is, though, takes some explaining.

So Duhé talks with art historians, architects, veteran capitol personalities and restorers to decipher the hieroglyphs inside and out.

Once you know the language of the symbols these Depression-era artists used, Louisiana’s Capitol reveals a grand intent. It celebrates hard work and spiritual values. In this program we literally read the ‘writing on the walls.’

Completed in 1932 at a cost of five million dollars, the state capitol was a dream come true for then-U.S. Senator Huey Long. The most colorful political figure of the 1930s, Long ran Louisiana as a notorious populist and rivaled the power and popularity of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Renovations begun last year will cost more than the capitol did to build. Cracks in the front steps, water damage and decades of neglect are detailed in the program. Speaker of the House Hunt Downer complains that the original furniture, hand made to match the interior details and colors, is long gone.

Yet we see, in This Old State House, some pieces being returned and how restorers are reclaiming the original intent of the design one room at a time.

In this latest documentary LPB’s cultural reporter Jeff Duhé, creator of the network’s popular Lost Louisiana series, serves as tour guide to the smallest details of rich marble and Beaux Arts designs. Many think the Louisiana capitol is Art Deco but the highly embellished walls and outside friezes celebrate the public building with images honoring the common dreams of the people who built it.

“Putting all the pieces together was a passion for the artists who worked here, some of the best in the world. We honor them in this program when we expose their often forgotten marks left all over this monument to the common man,” Duhe says.