Minnesota State Capitol
The Minnesota State Capitol is the seat of government for the U.S. state of Minnesota, in its capital city of Saint Paul. It houses the Minnesota Senate, Minnesota House of Representatives, the office of the attorney general and the office of the governor. The building also includes a chamber for the Minnesota Supreme Court, although court activities may also take place in the neighboring Minnesota Judicial Center.
There have been three State Capitol buildings. The present building was designed by architect Cass Gilbert and completed in 1905. Its Beaux-Arts/American Renaissance design was influenced by the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and by McKim, Mead & White's Rhode Island State House. From 2013 to 2017 the building underwent an extensive restoration. This included replacing existing infrastructure; adding new mechanical systems; replacing or repairing tens of thousands of pieces of marble on the exterior; cleaning historic paintings, murals, and sculptures; and adding safety and accessibility features.
The building is set in a landscaped campus with the Capitol Mall on its south front, Leif Erikson Park on its west, and Judicial Plaza to its east. Various monuments and memorials are located in these green spaces.
History
First Minnesota State Capitol
The current State Capitol building is the third building to serve this purpose. The territorial legislature first met in a temporary headquarters in the Central House Hotel. In 1851, work began to oversee finances and the hiring of contractors to build the Capitol. Its architect, N. C. Prentiss drew up specifications for the new Capitol. Exterior details included brick work, cut stone floors and steps for the porches, a wood pediment, wood Ionic-style columns, and a well-framed roof covered with fireproof material. Interior work called for Norway pine flooring and staircases of oak and ash with oak handrails and turned balusters. The legislature moved into the new Capitol in time for the 5th territorial legislative session on January 4, 1854.The population boomed after Minnesota became a state on May 11, 1858, and the Capitol building was expanded with a new wing on the Exchange Street side of the building in 1873 and a second wing facing Wabasha Street in 1878.
Despite efforts to make the Capitol fire-resistant, it was destroyed by fire on March 1, 1881. While legislators met in the evening, fire broke out in the dome of the Capitol and quickly spread. There were no deaths, but efforts to save the building failed. It was replaced on the same site in 1883 by the second Capitol building.
Second Minnesota State Capitol
After fire destroyed Minnesota's first Capitol building, the second Capitol, a three-story, Romanesque, masonry building designed by Leroy Buffington, was completed in 1883 on the site of the first Capitol. Buffington designed the new building in the shape of a Greek cross. It featured a foundation of cut stone and walls of red brick with Dresbach sandstone trim. Each wing measured 150 feet in length. The main entrance on the southwest from Wabasha Street opened onto the first floor, where the governor, attorney general, auditor, treasurer, and secretary of state had offices. The Assembly chamber in the southeast wing featured a twenty-five-foot ceiling with a large stained glass skylight. The Senate chamber in the southwest wing was finished in yellow birch and birdseye maple. The Supreme Court chamber in the southeast wing featured woodwork of cherry and Hungarian ash.Shortly after it opened, deficiencies of the new building were becoming clear. Overcrowding due to a lack of space, a lack of adequate fireproofing, and the discovery of dry rot made the building increasing unacceptable. Additionally, poor ventilation led in the push for a new Capitol building in 1893. It had served as the seat of Minnesota state government for just 10 years before state officials began planning a grander, more efficient Capitol. After the completion of the third State Capitol in 1905, the state used the old Capitol for meeting space, storage, and parking until its demolition in 1937. The site for the first and second Capitol buildings eventually became home to the former Arts and Science Building and McNally Smith Music Academy.
Third Minnesota State Capitol
The present state Capitol was designed by Cass Gilbert, whose design was selected by the Board of State Capitol Commissioners over 41 other submissions. Butler-Ryan Construction was selected as the contractor. Work began on the capitol in 1896, its corner-stone laid July 27, 1898, and construction was completed in 1905. The construction cost US$4.5 million. It opened its doors to the public for the first time on January 2, 1905. In 1893 Governor Knute Nelson appointed the seven-member Board of State Capitol Commissioners to oversee the construction of a new Capitol following the recommendation of the state legislature. The board oversaw every aspect of the work. This included supervising the expenditures, acquiring property, setting building specifications, selecting the architect and general contractor, and giving final approval for the type of stone to use on the exterior, as well as the art and artists.File:Cass Gilbert standing before partially completed Minnesota State Capitol dome.jpg|thumb|200px|Cass Gilbert during construction of the drum in 1901, upon which the dome was built
The site selected by the commission was "Wabasha Hill", bounded by Park Avenue, University Avenue, Cedar and Wabasha Streets, and Central Avenue. While this was the costliest of the four sites considered for the Capitol, it was the largest, and the Commission concluded that it was the best location for the building. Dozens of companies and hundreds of workers worked to complete the statehouse. Six workers were killed in accidents between 1898 and 1903 as a result of unsafe working conditions.
Upon completion, the building drew praise from the architecture community, leading to requests for Gilbert to design Capitol buildings for other states, such as West Virginia and Arkansas, and other notable structures.
Originally, the Capitol housed all the executive offices and the three branches of state government, state agencies and commissions, and the Minnesota Historical Society. Expansion of offices and meeting rooms, reconstruction of chambers, and subdivision of corridors occurred as early as the 1930s. As needs expanded, the state agencies and commissions, and over half of the executive offices, moved out of the Capitol to other buildings. One of the first to leave was the Minnesota Historical Society, which relocated to its own building next to the Capitol in 1915. Most recently, the offices of the Senate moved to the newly constructed Minnesota Senate Building in January 2016.
The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
Architecture
The Minnesota Capitol is usually described as "Beaux-Arts", a modern term not in use when the Capitol was built, but a style made popular in part by the architecture at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. In addition to being influenced by his time at the World's Columbian Exposition, the State Capitol's architect Cass Gilbert was inspired by McKim, Mead & White's Rhode Island State House. Gilbert wrote a note in the margins on a 1912 article on his work stating that his plan of the Minnesota capitol had been greatly influenced by the one in Rhode Island.The building's structure consists of a steel and cast iron frame on rough limestone foundation walls resting on concrete footings. Guastavino tile vaulting forms the ceilings on both the ground and first floor. The structural elements of a building primarily consist of load-bearing brick and stone masonry walls and piers supporting steel-framed floor and roof systems. Care given in the construction of the original structure was so great that even far removed mechanical spaces not intended to be seen by the public were designed and built with a high standard of finish and design.
;Building dimensions
East to west, the Capitol is more than long. From ground level to the top of the dome's lantern measures. Inside, the building has more than of floor space, or about of space.
;Dome
The Minnesota State Capitol dome is the second largest self-supported marble dome in the world, behind Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, on which Gilbert based his design. The dome itself is actually made up of three domes or layers. The outer layer is a self-supporting dome made of Georgia marble blocks resting upon their own weight. Hidden inside is a brick and steel cone that supports the lantern and golden sphere at the top of the dome and provides an internal water drainage system, which helps avoid the heaving problem created by the freezing and thawing of Minnesota winters. Below that is the decorative masonry dome that can be seen from the inside, looking up from the rotunda. At the dome's base are 12 marble eagles paired with the columns surrounding the drum of the dome. At the dome's top is a columned stone lantern which is then topped by a finial globe covered in gold leaf.
;Stone
Because it was just over 30 years after the American Civil War when the building was designed, Gilbert drew ire for choosing marble from Georgia rather than native Minnesota granite for the exterior. Gilbert insisted on using Georgia white marble, saying that the use of a darker color would make it look "glooming and forbidding". A compromise was made with native granite for the steps and the base and interior walls of Kasota limestone, while using the Georgia white marble for the vast majority of the buildings' exterior.
The steps of the two grand staircases in the east and west wings of the Capitol are made of Hauteville limestone, which resembles the Kasota limestone used through the walls of the Capitol but can take more wear. The 36 variegated columns surrounding the grand staircases are made from Breche Violette marble from Italy.
In the rotunda, the giant columns in the four open spaces are made from Minnesota granite. The deep bronze columns on the north and south were quarried near Ortonville, Minnesota and the purplish gray columns on the east and west were quarried near Rockville, Minnesota.
Dividing the statuary niches and the Kasota stone walls in the rotunda from the "Civilization of the Northwest" murals above them is a line of Sioux Quartzite from a quarry in Jasper, Minnesota. Previously it was thought to be Catlinite/Pipestone, which is prized by Native Americans, primarily those of the Plains nations for use in making ceremonial pipes. During the 2013-2017 renovation, the stone was tested and found not to be Catlinite.