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Pa. Capitol's historic tiled floor is a hazard for heels

HARRISBURG - Ah, the sounds of the state Capitol during the busy fall legislative session. The lawmakers backslapping, the chorus of schoolchildren on class trips, and the click, click, yeeooow! of women's heels slip-sliding across historic tile floors.

Deborah Musselman with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Assocation walks up the stairs in the State Capitol rotunda. The rough tile and steep stairs can be tricky in high heels. (Ron Tarver / Staff Photographer)
Deborah Musselman with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Assocation walks up the stairs in the State Capitol rotunda. The rough tile and steep stairs can be tricky in high heels. (Ron Tarver / Staff Photographer)Read more

HARRISBURG - Ah, the sounds of the state Capitol during the busy fall legislative session. The lawmakers backslapping, the chorus of schoolchildren on class trips, and the click, click, yeeooow! of women's heels slip-sliding across historic tile floors.

Meet Public Enemy No. 1 for women in the Capitol, particularly lobbyists in stiletto heels: the polished Moravian tiles that blanket 16,000 square feet of the great rotunda and the main halls of the 106-year-old building.

Smaller than baseball cards, the faces of the Capitol's terra-cotta tiles vary. Some protrude; others dip. In between are low-lying gullies of heel-gobbling grout.

This uneven surface has sent generations of women hobbling to podiatrists, kept cobblers employed, and forced many a veteran Capitol issue-pusher to trade in her heel taps for flats.

"The floor's beautiful, but it's a b- to walk on," says lobbyist Angela Zaydon, who swears she'll never be caught dead in the halls of government in any shoes (and she boasts 500 pairs) with less than three-inch heels.

"It's uneven, it's slippery. It's not practical for heels," says Zaydon, who works for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and previously lobbied for optometrists' and insurers' trade groups.

Almost every longtime female lobbyist in Harrisburg has a war story to tell, and - blisters to bunions - the battle scars to back it up.

'The Shoeless Lobbyist'

Holly Kinser, executive vice president for lobbying powerhouse S.R. Wojdak, has logged many a mile in Capitol corridors atop sky-high heels. Her client list includes the City of Philadelphia.

Kinser - who favors Prada pumps and Christian Louboutin red soles - says traversing the tiles led to painful knee injuries early in her career. She also remembers breaking a heel (on her shoe, not her foot) in the 1990s, in the middle of a busy legislative session day.

Those are the days when lobbyists are most on the go: Bills are being voted, amendments attached or squashed. "I had legislation moving and no time to get new shoes," Kinser recalls. "I had to lobby the rest of the day barefoot. Some people still call me the shoeless lobbyist."

Heidi Prescott, lobbyist for the Humane Society of the United States, went to a podiatrist in 2001 for pain in her Achilles tendons.

"When I told him I walked on cobblestones all day, he said, 'Cobblestones!?' Then he yelled at me about my heels," Prescott recalls.

The diagnosis was Achilles tendinitis. "It was very painful and took a year to heal."

Now Prescott, who has been pounding Capitol floors in the name of animal welfare for 18 years, carefully limits the days she wears heels.

"Not on days when I am getting cosponsors for a bill," she says. "I run, run, run."

Female lobbyists say heel height is more than just a fashion choice - it is part of looking professional in a male-dominated building. In other words, no sneakers in the speaker's office.

"If you want to run with the big dogs, keep your shoes on," Zaydon says. "You don't see men in sneakers."

Foe of the well-heeled?

Foot pain was probably the last thing a Bucks County tile-maker had in mind.

In 1898, Henry Chapman Mercer, an avowed anti-industrialist with a love of German pottery, founded the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Doylestown to craft decorative tiles using native Bucks County clay. A few years later he won the commission that became his legacy: flooring for the new state Capitol.

The first floor became Mercer's palette. He spread rust-, blue- and black-colored tiles, interspersed with 400 mosaics that paid homage to the state's history, its art and archaeology, technology and industry, fauna and flora.

"It is the life of the people," Mercer wrote, "rough, powerful and absolutely real, that seems to struggle in this plastic pavement for expression."

Struggle, indeed.

"I've picked up any number of women off the floor," says Tony Barbush, chief clerk of the state House, who has worked in the Capitol since he was hired as a page in 1975, just shy of his 18th birthday. "Is it dangerous for people in heels? Yes."

Lobbyist Zaydon reports nothing worse than blisters in 11 years of Capitol visits. But she admits to tiptoeing on the tiles. "It's toe-to-toe, not heel-toe, so your legs have to compensate for that."

Balancing on skinny heels - feet aslant, toes crammed in pointy shoes - is hard enough on any surface. But women say the Capitol tiles are worse than Philadelphia's brick-lined sidewalks and cracked pavements. They tell of regular trips to the cobbler for new heels, replacement rubber taps, and scuffed toes.

"I dropped off two pairs this week for new heel taps," Kinser says. She credits Mayor Nutter's recent trip to Harrisburg seeking legislative help with overhauling property-tax assessments: "He moves fast and likes to take the stairs."

Not everyone blames the flooring. "It's not the tiles. It's the shoes," says Valerie Gaydos, who favors an average heel height of 11/2 inches.

Gaydos ought to know. She lobbies for the Pennsylvania Podiatric Association - whose members, she adds, advise that anything higher than a flat is a no-no.

Barbash, too, says stiletto wearers have only themselves to blame - "Shoes should be function over form," the House clerk opines. And the floor has a sort of lobbyist of its own in Charles Yeske, manager of Moravian Tile Works, which is still churning out the clay tiles after 113 years.

"A hazard to whom?" Yeske asks. He successfully petitioned the Capitol Preservation Committee to set a new policy for delivery carts in the building. Balloon tires replaced metal wheels - to prevent damage to the tiles.

Yeske says some historic buildings warn visitors about spiked heels, and maybe the Capitol should, too. "You are entering a historic structure. It deserves a certain amount of respect, like a church."

But churches don't often feature lobbyists and mayors rushing about from office to office. That's how Kinser describes last summer, when Philadelphia's sales tax was under intense discussion.

She resorted to flip-flops - except when lobbying Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), the powerful Senate majority leader. "I'd be slipping my heels back on as I was walking back into Sen. Pileggi's office."

Some say navigating the tiles makes for female bonding in an otherwise dog-eat-dog lobbying environment. Gaydos says that even though her clients suggest sensible shoes, she admires women who have mastered the Capitol balancing act.

"Anyone who can juggle those floors in heels shows they are physically fit and flexible," she says. "More power to them."