Present State Capitol Building

After the destruction of the Old Capitol Building in 1897, a sense of loss in Harrisburg quickly gave way to a spirit of community advancement centered on constructing a new Capitol Building. To keep state government operating, a plain interim Capitol designed by Henry Ives Cobb was hastily erected on the same site on a shoestring budget. Public criticism of that building led to the creation of the Capitol Building Commission in 1901 to plan the expansion and elaboration of Cobb's interim structure within the walls of a new building. Philadelphia architect Joseph Miller Huston won the design competition and sought to unite the artistic expression of the Italian Renaissance with a new Renaissance in America. With its 272 foot dome modeled on Michelangelo's St. Peter's in Rome and its main rotunda stairway patterned after the Grand Opera House in Paris, the resulting Capitol became a richly adorned "Palace of Art" of marble, gold, tile, murals, and sculpture by prominent artists, sculptors, and artisans including Abbey, Barnard, Oakley, Van Ingen, and Mercer. At its dedication on October 4, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt praised it as "the handsomest building I ever saw," and its grandeur helped spark an unmatched movement of civic pride and improvement in Harrisburg that laid the foundations of the city known today.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania · United States