Illinois State Capitol

Illinois State Capitol

The Illinois State Capitol, located in Springfield, Illinois, is the capitol and seat of government of the U.S. state of Illinois. The current building is the sixth capitol to serve the state since its entry into the United States in 1818. The current capitol is in the architectural style of the French Renaissance. The capitol was designed by Cochrane and Garnsey, an architecture and design firm based in Chicago, Illinois. Ground was first broken for the new capitol on March 11, 1868, and it was completed twenty years later for a total cost of $4,500,000.

Description

With a total ground height of 361 feet (110 meters), the Illinois capitol is the tallest non-skyscraper capitol, even exceeding the height of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. The only state capitols taller than it are the non-classical designs found in Louisiana and Nebraska, which opted for more modern buildings for their current capitols. The dome itself is 92.5 feet (28.2 meters) wide, and is supported by solid bedrock, 25.5 feet (7.77 meters) below the surface. The building itself is shaped like a Latin cross aligned to the major points of the compass, and measures 379 feet (116 meters) from the north end to the south end, and 268 feet (81.7 meters) from the east end to the west end. The capitol occupies a nine acre plot of land which forms the capitol grounds.


Interestingly enough, when the capital was created several empty shafts were included for the future installation of elevators. Installation of the elevators began in 1887. The original models were water operated and often the subject of ridicule in local papers as they were deemed inadequate for a building with the stature and prominence of the State Capitol. It is unknown when the first electric elevators were installed, but the first mention of them occurs in 1939, when the legislature appropriated $30,000 for repair of the electric elevators.

The capitol dome is plated in zinc to provide a silver facade which does not weather (a feature popular in Europe at the time of its construction). The interior of the dome features a Plaster Frieze, painted to resemble bronze, which illustrates points in Illinois history, and stained glass windows, including a stained glass replica of the state flag at the pinnacle of the dome.[1] The flag featured in the top of the dome is the flag flown by Illinois prior to the Civil War. It differs from the modern flag in that the phrase "State Sovereignty" is above the phrase "National Union". After the Civil War the legislature voted to reverse these phrases as they felt that National Union was the more important of these two concepts.

History of the Capitol Location

The current Capitol of Illinois is the sixth such capitol in the history of the state. The first was located in Kaskaskia, Illinois, a city on the Mississippi River founded by the French in 1709.

Kaskaskia had served as the territorial capital of Illinois since 1809, so it was deemed an appropriate location for the capital of the fledgling state. The first capitol building was rented by the state and was by all accounts a simple two-story building which the state leased for $4.00 a day.

Wishing to site the capital in the state's interior, the first General Assembly petitioned Congress for a grant of suitable land. Congress offered, and the state accepted, a land parcel on the Kaskaskia River around eighty miles northeast of Kaskaskia. This location, which would be named Vandalia, Illinois, was selected in part with the hopes of encouraging settlers to move to other parts of the state which were still uninhabited. The state lets its lease on the first capital in Kaskaskia expire, and the building burned in 1824.

In 1820, with the completion of the new or 'Second' capitol, Vandalia, Illinois became the capital of the state. (In 1881 this decision to move the capital became wise in hindsight, as Kaskaskia was destroyed by a sudden change in the course of the Mississippi River.) A third capitol was soon erected for a cost of $15,000. Soon after its erection, calls began to echo around the state to move the capitol to a location nearer the center of the state. A bill introduced in 1833 calling for a statewide vote to move the capital to determine a new location from a list of central choices including Alton, Jacksonville, Peoria, Springfield, Vandalia, and the state's actual geographic center. While Alton emerged as the victor the legislature determined the slim margin too small to be conclusive and the vote was aborted. In 1836, a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln began to push the notion of moving the capitol to Springfield, Illinois along with other colleagues of his in the legal profession. That summer the third capitol was torn down and replaced with the fourth capitol (built at a cost of $16,000) in an effort to keep the capitol in Vandalia.

Although the new brick structure was extravagant, the General Assembly ignored the gesture and sided with Lincoln voting to move the Capitol to Springfield on February 25, 1837.

On July 4, 1837, the first brick was laid for Illinois' fifth capitol. In 1853, the capitol was completed for a total sum of $260,000 almost twenty times the cost of any previous structure. The building was designed in the Greek Revival style from stone quarried six miles from the site. For many years it was the largest and most extravagant capitol of the western frontier of the United States. The fifth capitol is considered by many to be Lincoln's capitol as it was here that he argued cases before the Illinois Supreme Court, here that he served in the state legislature, here that he first confronted Stephen Douglas, and here where he delivered his famous "A House Divided" speech.

As Illinois prospered and experienced several booms in population, the fifth capitol became crowded, especially as a result of relocations after the Civil War. On February 24, 1867, the state voted to construct a new larger capitol. After breaking the ground for the sixth and current Capitol in 1868, the state recouped its costs in the fifth capitol by selling it to Sangamon County for $200,000. It served as the county court house until 1961 when the state again purchased the building and restored it so it could serve as a historic landmark, the Old State Capitol State Historic Site.


External links

The Illinois Statehouse