Beautiful State Capitol Buildings

A selection from Curbed.

Oregon's is tragic.

The Texas State Capitol Building in Austin is just stunning. As is the California State Capitol in Sacramento.

Built in 1798 with the golden dome.

All 50 state capitols. New Mexico's and Hawaiis are quite different.

Neo Classical Virginia, designed by Jefferson. It’s simplicity is very beautiful and it’s situated on rolling green lawns.

The only three I like are the ones in Hawaii, Massachusetts and Maryland. The rest are all gaudy over-the-top monstrosities.

British Columbia's looks like one of those British Raj monstrosities.

To whit, Calcutta's Victoria Memorial, now a museum.

R8 Did I miss something? Have we annexed parts of Canada?

North Dakota

Victoria Terminus (HQ of India's railway operator) in Mumbai. Hideous.

R10, R7 was talking about "gaudy over-the-top monstrosities" and so I posted the BC one because it's a quintessential example of one.

Minnesota's capitol is very nice, if a common style. The gold statute add-on is cool, especially in person.

Minnesota also has really nice grounds.

The Illinois capitol is actually a really nice building, but the grounds are very meh.

I love the NYS Capitol Building in Albany, circa 1899... It's an architectural amalgamation, the result of budget woes and changes in administrations mid-way through construction. A dome intended for the center was scrapped because the building couldn't support the weight.

Massachusetts has the best one overall, Bulfinch at the absolute top of his game, followed by Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Nebraska, North Carolina, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Hawaii, more or less in that order. New Mexico is an interesting attempt at a Native American style building and New York's Capitol is full of great details even though the building as a whole is somewhat incoherent.

The others are all more or less adequate examples of their various styles, although several suffer from having a dome popped on at either the last minute (Alabama, Connecticut) or decades after being completed (South Carolina). The only one that strikes me as really unsightly is Wyoming's, which just looks crudely overwrought. Alaska and North Dakota's are no great shakes either.

South Carolina

Will grand architecture ever come back in the United States? I wouldn't think so. You see it in churches all the time too - new churches don't even try (I guess you could argue that the point is religion not architecture). And colleges - the new buildings are never in those classic architectural styles like the old ones. Sometimes colleges build great new modern buildings, some that really work well with the older ones. Also, they do a lot of knockoffs which work in limited instances and i many others are just "don't bother."

I always liked Lousiana's - especially after seeing it in person - because it's so ridiculous, and different.

Illinois. I'd say it looks even better in person. But, again, the setting while not awful, leaves a lot to be desired. Front has a lawn, but the whole complex has a tight street border. And the back side is admin buildings and parking lots.

Whoops - "gold statue," not "statute."

Alaska's is very plain.

I like Massachusetts, but clearly the best?

R19, I don't think traditional architecture is going to be a huge thing moving forward. It's for McMansions now.

I think contemporary architecture is going to be the main, ever evolving language moving forward. We'll still use and preserve the best of the older stuff, however.

I like the Art Deco ones, like Nebraska, Louisiana, and Oregon, but many have beautiful murals and sculptures adorning them.

The Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg has lovely murals by Austin Abbey, who also did a series of paintings on the Holy Grail in the Boston Public Library.

North Dakota @ R11 looks like an insane asylum.

Wow Virginia is so, I don't know how to describe it - stark and flat in color, yet looks like a wedding cake. It doesn't really "sing" in pictures (at least the ones posted), but I bet it's amazing in person

Nebraska's reminds me of Hoover Tower at Stanford.

Virginia's is in Palladian style. It's small.

I wonder how often they clean Virginia's.

Minnesota's was rehabbed/renovated/cleaned fairly recently and that gold statute is so much brighter than before.

Stately and symbolic of Connecticut’s old money prominence.

[quote] Texas's, which uses "sunset red granite". That's why it's slightly pink. I like the triangle pediment just below the dome.

Pink with a triangle, well some designer was fashionable well before his time.

I really like the Texas capitol.

The capitol building of Texas is in Austin, which is the capital of Texas. Is that right, lol.

The Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison. The building is a classic, and thr area around it is fucking gorgeous. It's on a narrow isthmus between two lakes. Tons of shopping, nightlife including two gay bars a block away. Monona Terrace at the bottom of the pic. Theaters, international cuisine, the Madison farmers market circles the Capitol building every Saturday spring-fall. I live 45 minutes away & I've walked this area hundreds of times. Great area for people-watching as well; UW Madison is a few blocks away.

Did Alaska buy a bank and convert it into the state capitol?

The "Lofts at Juneau Square" weren't selling; so the State took it over.

both Missouri and Kansas "domes" have sustained tornado damge in the last century. directy hits

Kansas' is very classical but in native limestone. The statue on top is also really nice. It is a Native American shooting an arrow into the sky to represent the state motto of "To the stars, through difficulty" because it was added as a state part of a compromise right before the Civil War.

Some of those buildings are ugly as hell.

R2 Did an architect from Romania design the Oregon capitol building ? It certainly has a "behind the Iron Curtain" vibe.

New Mexico's capitol building looks where it belongs.

r29 - Nebraska's capitol is often referred to as the Phallus Palace. It's supposed to look like an ear of corn, but it looks more like, well, you know.

If I ever whipped off my skivvies and my dick looked like an Art Deco skyscraper, I'd be headed to the emergency room.

Skyscrapers are phallic? So are you if you're standing up.

Ohio - it figures

They need their dome back.

Most southern capitol buildings face the south. Confederacy and all. At least that’s what I learned in school.

The NC Capitol faces East. Orientalism it was called at the time, towards Jerusalem. NC’s is considered to be one of the finest surviving examples of Greek Revival architecture in a public building in the Untied States. Built of locally-quarried granite, it was designed by Town and Davis and was praised for its design by FL Olmstead during his tour of the South. The stone was hauled to the site from a quarry a mile and a half away on an experimental railroad, the first railroad in the state. It’s never been added on to, and now functions as a ceremonial office for the Governor, with the Legislature meeting in a 60s monstrosity down the street.

Check out Indiana. Native Bedford limestone.

Seems like more states than not have pretty damn nice capitols.

I've been to Madison several times, but never to the Capitol, just saw it in the skyline. I had no idea that it was a "four prong" structure.

I agree- I like the art deco ones - Nebraska, Louisiana, and Oregon. Also the different ones like Florida, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Arizona. Too many other domed ones.

The western states, obviously, are a lot newer.

The South Carolina State House is the only USA Capital building that was fired upon during war. It was under construction, but near complete in 1865. Stars mark the cannon damage from Sherman's troops. Other scars are noticeable. Union troops broke off the George Washinton walking cane on a grounds statue.

Columbia was burned. It is where the Articles of Succession happened.

I took a really beautiful photo of Vermont's capitol in the fall one time. This not my photo, but the idea is the same. I love the gold dome.

I love NY's capitol in Albany and then they built the 70's monstrosity of Empire State Plaza. Which I kind of like in a retro futuristic way but it doesn't belong in Albany. Albany is an old city and low rise with a population of about 90K people.

Connecticut's is also beautiful.

OR really captures the mood of depress and fog that blankets that state.

Alabama's is simple but pretty.

Arizona's original capitol building is now a museum. The government moved to adjacent buildings on the complex. Here's the State Capitol Executive Tower, where the Governor and Secretary of State have their offices.

Yes, R34, you got it right. The mnemonic device for capitol versus capital is that the “o” in “capitol” represents a dome that so many capitol buildings have. That leaves capital for the seat of the capitol.

R3/R14 need(s) to stop linking to shit that downloads.

POST A LINK TO A URL.

Years ago, Alaska held a contest to design a new capitol building to replace the bank-like structure used as the state headquarters. The winning design was one submitted by Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne, and his Santa Monica, CA design firm, Morphosis. The glass and steel structure with a see-through glass dome that lights up at night, was met with overwhelming derision by Alaskans. It was too avant-garde for a largely rural small town capital like Juneau. Luckily, and perhaps not coincidently, Alaska ran out of money to fund the construction, so the project remains in limbo. Several government officials hope to transfer the capital to Anchorage, dump the design, and start from scratch.

R35 doesn't know what "classic" means, and the misplaced radial wings of Madison's abomination are an offense against aesthetics and architecture.

I worked as a consultant in the gilded horror of Iowa in Des Moines. The sandstone was so soft and flaky that it was a nonstop reconstruction job with scaffolding moving around the building, resuming where it started because of the damage.

Missouri's is bad, too. But the original Missouri State Capitol in St. Charles is my favorite. It perfectly expresses a frontier, vernacular honesty from the early 1820s. It looks "American" in a good way.

For me, Massachusetts, Virginia, Vermont and West Virginia (in the familiar style), and the old Illinois Capitol in Vandalia are the next-best.

But the "over the top" complaint misses the point of the Gilded-Era style. Tarted Neo-Classical may be ugly to one, but when done well at least it has a kind of internal integrity. But when they go too far....

And anyone who's been to Nebraska's in Lincoln would see the difference between Deco and Soviet-Triumphal-Deco.

I always loved the interior of the NYS Capitol — especially the Million Dollar Staircase and the ceiling mural in the War Room.

r29 and r42 : When I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, the capitol building was fondly referred to as "The Penis of the Plains."

The old state capitol of Illinois.

Not the first, which as noted above was in Vandalia, but what's referred to in Springfield as the old state capitol.

The Delaware Legislative Hall is a fine example of Colonial Mid-Atlantic architecture.

That is nice, R64. It looks like it could be on the campus of Johns Hopkins, or I'm sure several other East Coast schools.

Georgia's capitol is nice enough, designed to resemble the Neoclassical architectural style of the United States Capitol, and finished in 1889.

It was among the earliest buildings to have elevators, centralized steam heat, and combination gas and electric lights. Classical pilasters and oak paneling are used throughout the building. The floors of the interior are marble from Pickens County, which still produces marble today.

The dome was originally constructed from terra cotta and covered with tin, but in a 1958 renovation the present dome was gilded with native gold leaf from near Dahlonega in Lumpkin County, where the first American gold rush occurred during the 1830s.

Like many state capitols in big cities it suffers from being placed on grounds that are too small for the size of the structure and it is far too close to the street from most sides.

Florida's is so Florida with the mishmash of elements. Are the pink awnings permanent? Or were they for breast cancer awareness or something?

Pickens County? Lumpkin County? What next? Fiddle Dee Dee County?

Piggly Wiggly county!

R2 That could be East Berlin.

R20 That looks like the Houston city hall. Sort of.

Another vote for Massachusetts

NJ's is pretty ordinary

The Pennsylvania State Capitol is the most beautiful of them all.

Pennsylvania’s interior staircase is based on the Paris Opera’s and the dome is mirror on St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. The floor is beautiful Arts and Crafts tile with designs related to the state.

West Virginia

Perfect seasonal floor tiles from the Pennsylvania Capital rotunda floor.

I like Massachusetts, really. But, I don't think it's that great; not my favorite. I'm missing something that others are seeing.

I wish Hawaii, Alaska, and New Mexico could have nice grand buildings like most every other state.

New Mexico fits the surroundings, but I wish it was grander - maybe a bigger version of this with a big perimeter of desert landscaping

I wonder if Hawai'i's is deliberately boring as a way of not upstaging the Iolani Palace

R61, New York’s state Capitol building is a marvel from a different age. It really benefited from having Henry Hobson Richardson as the architect with the commission at the moment when the state had money to spend.

During his time he designed the Senate Chamber (and the furniture) as well as the Senate staircase which, in a subtle dig at creationists who were akin to today’s evangelical Christians, featured carvings charting the evolution of man from amoeba to human. His stealthy work was not really discovered until it was too late.

Richardson, who also designed Boston’s Trinity Church, studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. As an homage to his time there with fellow student Charles Garnier, the Senate staircase is an almost exact replica of Garnier’s grand staircase at the Paris Opera House.

In the 1940s, the skylight over the Senate staircase was blacked out as way to prevent enemy forces from using the building as a landmark while on bombing raids. It was restored in the 1990s. Ironically, on 9/11 the World Trade Center terrorists flew west from Boston then used the building next door (the Corning Tower, tallest building between NYC and Montreal) to get their bearings and flew south along the Hudson River to NYC.

The Capitol is the only one I have studied that benefited from having a task force convened to discuss its future. The 1978 commission made the decision to hire an official state Capitol architect and undo the decades of modernizations the building suffered from the 1920s through the 1970s.

The building will never be perfect but today’s version is closer to the 1910s version than ever before.

Hawaii's capitol reminds me of a bank built in the 1970s

Open a new account today!

This is Australia’s national capitol in Canberra.

New Zealand’s in Wellington.

Credit for being different, but I think they're ugly.

What a jumble, R73. I have no idea what I’m looking at. Is it asymmetrical?

New Jersey’s is indeed asymmetrical.

R59 That's even worse than the one they have right now. It looks like a west coast library built circa 2004.

R41 Never seen that before, but I like it! It's unique.

Indiana’s first State House.

Since we're getting such a broad cross-section of states, we might as well look at them all.

Montana's is nice and has a pretty setting. Without looking I imagine ND and SD are meh or bleh.

The ones that are just imitations of the US Capitol are sad.

New Jersey’s is an unsatisfactory amalgam of various buildings crowded together so that there is no good view of it. Shameful.

I mean, seriously NJ?

Somewhere in that mess in Trenton is this pile.

There's only one angle where NJ's looks semi-decent (well, sort of).

In contrast to NJ is NY. They let Nelson Rockefeller go wild.

I call it “Little Brasilia”

So warm.

Albany is the city of the future!

It might work in person on a sunny day if they had beautiful landscape architecture. I mean, it is a nice big plaza with water feature. But, can't imagine it would ever look nice in in a broad photo. Little Brasilia is apt.

I stand corrected - South Dakota is nice.

R64 How can that be an example of colonial architecture if it was built in the 1930s?! Colonial and colonial revival aren't the same thing, missy!

Here's a lovely structure that actually is colonial: the old capitol in Boston. Gorgeous building but dreadful surroundings.

I like Nebraska and Virgina. Nebraska looks like in mid 20th C it would have had an in-house gymnasium with plenty of mid-western horse cock on the offer.

Maryland's "state house." (Not sure why some of the eastern states use that term in lieu of "capitol.") It's the oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use and is the only state house ever to have served as the nation's capitol.

American Samoa's district capitol building in Fagatogo is a grand [italic]fale.[/italic]

The Northern Marianas district capitol building in Saipan looks like your all-purpose school house, community church, American Legion building.

OP the proportions are all wrong in the Texas building. The dome is too tall.

Ooooooooooooo-kla-homa

[quote] Pickens County? Lumpkin County? What next? Fiddle Dee Dee County?

You sound like some ignorant uneducated halfwit

Pickens County is named for American Revolutionary War General Andrew Pickens.

Lumpkin County was named for Wilson Lumpkin, who was Governor of Georgia when the county was formed in 1832.

Hawaii's capitol looks like some sort of civic center auditorium.

That hideous mess in Albany, NY. should have been demolished years ago.

Puerto Rico

The original design for Puerto Rico was better.

I am stunned by the length and boringness of this thread. Perhaps a record???

Sorry r110, but those counties sound like yokels named them.

Here's the Old State Capitol in Vandalia, Illinois.

Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Amazing - finished about 1850 or a couple years after.

R115, we're not stunned by your see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away snarky comment about the thread. Someone commenting so deep into a thread about the length and boring nature of the thread?

r60 - insufferable.

Agree with you r35. I went to school at the UW-Madison.

There is only one thing wrong with the area around the Capitol : If you weren't born in born in and grew up Madison, don't try to drive in that area.

Everybody I know who has lived in Madison temporarily for school (me included) hates having to drive in Madison because the streets are just too damn confusing.

[quote]Lumpkin County was named for Wilson Lumpkin, who was Governor of Georgia when the county was formed in 1832.

Well, we didn't think it was named after Lurleen!

Alaska's capitol building, to say the least, lacks aesthetic appeal. I get, however, why they built, or bought, plain.

Why try to compete with those beautiful mountains?

R120 = Typical Cheesehead honky with no knowledge or experience.

Better to be insufferable than ignorant, lambkins. Because knowledge is so offensive to the ignorant.

What happened to the first Old Michigan Capitol would improve Wisconsin's!

Ah, my Florida. They were supposed to tear down the old one when they built the new one that looks like a penis but couldn’t decide.They kept the old too. Some things never change.

[quote] It's supposed to look like an ear of corn, but it looks more like, well, you know.

Like what, Dorothy?

South Dakota's is stunningly beautiful inside--one of the prettiest and most elaborate interiors of any state capitol. Sadly almost no one gets to see it because Pierre, the state capitol, is a small town in the dead center of the state (it's hundreds of miles from the interstate).

Montana's is another one that is incredibly ornate on the inside. It was built with mining money when monaatana was opne of the richest states in the union.

This is Florida Capitol.

So anything that's taller than it is wide looks like a penis? I mean I get it - but penis isn't the first thing I think of when seeing the FL or NE capitols - even with Florida's "balls."

Florida has such terrible taste. 🤮

Where does it look like a penis?

R120 I agree, Madison is complex & I don't drive it without a navigation app. Just makes it easier. Was just up there today & they've done a ton of new road work recently.

The grid on the isthmus is dense, and the four streets shooting off the four Capitol wings doesn't help, even if one of them is good ol State Street.

R35, R120 grew up in Madison, left after graduating UW Madison. It is a mess trying to drive in downtown and on campus. When I go back to see family the rental car stays until I have to leave downtown. Walking the square and campus is your best option.

I don't like the many capitols with the tall narrow drums? (if that's the correct architectural term) topped by a puny little dome. Obviously it was much more expensive and technically difficult to build a big, wide dome of the proper proportion to the rest of the building.

eg. Indiana State Capitol

Louisiana’s still has bullet holes inside from Huey Long’s shooting.

R133 I see the Indiana State House almost everyday. Well... Everyday before Covid. The dome is much more proportional in person. It is of a monumental scale. It is an interesting building in that each of the entrances are scaled and designed to reflect the prominence of the streets they face.

Does Mike Pence still work the Men's Rooms, R136

when he's in the area?

Missouri State Capitol

Something like the Diet of Japan, but in pinkish stone, would look nice for New Mexico.

That's a good idea, R139

I like the New Mexico capitol building in theory - the adobe exterior with the federal pediments and other classic details

But with no visible roof, it somehow seem unfinished and underwhelming

R97 R98 R99 They Might be Giants wrote a song about The Egg in Albany where they’ve often performed.

Albany is a testament to how much money David Rockefellar had

and how little taste in design and architecture

It was Nelson Rockefeller who built it R142

Thanks, R143

Different Rockefeller, same horrible dated design

It looks like some awful Soviet Union brutalist architecture

Does the egg have any function?

Does it house any offices or is it just "aesthetic"?

Does the egg have any function?

Does it house any offices or is it just "aesthetic"?

So many questions about the egg, but I want to know more about the chicken?

How many beautiful old buildings did they tear down to build this shit.

R149 Entire neighborhoods were razed to build that monstrosity, including a lot of old brownstones. The era of urban renewal devastated the landscape of a lot of northeast cities.

The Egg has several pretty decent theaters that seem to draw national acts — or did pre-pandemic. I saw David Byrne at the 400-seat (iirc) theater when he was doing his Byrne/Eno tour in 2008.

Did Nexivm use the Egg at all? It seem like the perfect environment for a cult? And could be the reason for having a cult in Albany. I’m still flabbergasted that a cult would base itself in Albany of all places.

I thought Raniere was based in that area because he attended nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

R137 I am but a powerless Mandarin. A low level Bureaucrat. A mere functionary. I saw the State House from the outside. I had real work to do. During the Pence administration, I was in the building one time for official business. I am in another building on the campus, I’d like to keep it that way.

Albany is a historic city dating back to the 1600's I can't imagine how much was destroyed to build that. That said it reminds me of Brasilia but Brasilia was n't a historic city.

Most of them are ugly or flawed knock-offs of US Capitol. Ohio has that odd turret-top, which is more plain than ugly. Oregon has a bad helmet that's worse. Texas' is too busy with lots of different styles included. Indiana has the same problem, plus it looks like they ran out of money and had to settle for an undersized dome. The classical oldies like Vermont and Massachusetts are beautiful. The modern ones never seem to strike the right note. New York has a bad compromise---a cheap version of Rockefeller Center and an old gingerbread building that looks like the Old Executive Office Building in DC (the place next to the White House) only worse.

R155 Indiana's capitol came in under budget. 2 million was set aside for the construction of the capitol. The costs came in at 1.8 million. The remaining $200,000.00 was returned to the general fund.

So it was just Hoosier bad taste.

Zuckerberg should donate some money for a new Hawaii capitol. Something that riffs on the palace but with a dome maybe.

Hawaii's present capital just won't do.

[quote]Hawaii's present capital just won't do.

Hawaii's capital is Honolulu.

Maybe you were referring to its CAPITOL.

I think several of the US capitol-esque state capitols with domes are very nice. Not all, but I don't think they're all bad just because they're knockoffs.

Autocorrect, R160. I know the difference.

The front elevation of Georgia's Capitol is better than the pix posted above

But it is poorly placed on busy Atlanta streets with inadequate grounds and setback

Georgia is an odd one, because it is hemmed in by other buildings and w/o the dome, easy to miss if you're close-by. It's also off to one side of the downtown area---away from the places where most people, locals or out of towners are likely to go. Most states have given their capitols a more prominent location. OTOH, it's Atlanta, where some of the most well-off neighborhoods are really ugly--like West Paces Ferry Road.

I like NYS capital building..it’s Victorian and different

I like the type of dome that’s on the West Building of the National Gallery of Art.

The Ohio State Capitol is much better than most give it credit for - the "drum" dome is unique in the US and artist Thomas Cole was an advisor to the project. Given its early date it was one of the most monumental public buildings in the country.

Columbus has some wonderful architecture.

R145, the Egg is a performing arts center.

Whoops, meant that for R146

Singapore

The Ohio capitol is a disappointment. The "drum" seems undersized, given the bulk of the base and the pediment seems out of place. As for architecture, Columbus is utterly forgettable. The art museum isn't very good either.

Oregon's looks like a memorial to the war dead in a western euorpean country

Really, R171? Columbus has great Art Deco, some of the best early cinemas still intact and a rare work by Burnham & Root, as well as German Village, one of America's most successful regeneration stories and a great repository of urban vernacular.

The Wexner Center never lived up to its hype and is now tainted with its association with Epstein.

Even when you can see it properly, the cupola of the Ohio Statehouse just looks odd and from the angle in R44's photo, it looks like they built built a drum but ran out of money to build a dome.