North Carolina State Capitol | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: We believe the subject of history makes people (i.e., American people) smarter, so in our quest to educate others, we will provide excerpts from the North Carolina History Project, an online publication of the John Locke Foundation. This sixty-fifth installment, was originally posted, by Shane Williams in the North Carolina History Project.

    In 1792, Raleigh was established as the official capital city. A two-story brick statehouse was built on Union Square in 1792 and completed in 1796. When this original statehouse burned down in 1831, the state legislature appropriated funding for a new facility located on the same grounds of the initial building. The building that stands today is designed in the Greek Revival style, with a cross shaped architectural design and a central dome rotunda. William Nichols was the architect. Nichols added a third floor, the eastern and western wings, and most notably a domed rotunda in the center to house Antonio Canova's statue of George Washington, which was destroyed in the 1831 fire.

    In 1832, the General Assembly decided that a new capitol would be built--a rendition of the old cross shaped rotunda design but slightly larger than the original. In constructing the new facility, William Nicholas Jr helped to create building plans, but he was replaced by prominent New York architect Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis. The building was greatly modernized and given a distinct neoclassical look, strongly emphasizing Greek Revival architecture in the United States. The interior design manifests facets of ancient Greek temples and its exterior reflects the Doric style columns of the Pantheon in Italy. The House of Representatives reflects the pattern of the circular Greek theatre and the Senate is designed after the Ionic style of the Erectheum. Non-classical areas of the building include two rooms on the third floor, which are designed in the Gothic style.
North Carolina's Capitol in early Spring: Above. The state capitol viewed from the center of Hillsborough Street. The North Carolina Confederate Memorial stands in the foreground: Below.     photos by Stan Deatherage    Click the images to enlarge to as much as 1000 pixels wide.

    Hired in 1834, Scottish architect David Paton, supervised the project and presided over many of the building's features. These include the overhanging gallery on the second floor, groined masonry vaulting on the first floor, and interior of the east and west wings. The interior ornamental work, chandeliers, and marble mantles were shipped from Philadelphia, and the chairs and desks in the House and Senate were made by North Carolina cabinet-maker, William Thompson.
North Carolina's Capitol, during the Civil War, was always under the threat of siege. Whether these large bore cannon were positioned here and thus on the capitol grounds is not not the issue, but surely they were positioned somewhere in defense of the North Carolina Capital: Above and below.     photos by Stan Deatherage    Click the images to enlarge to as much as 1000 pixels wide.

    The capitol runs 160 feet north to south and 140 feet east to west. It is also 97.5 feet tall from the top of the dome to the floor. The walls on the outside of the building were made with gneiss, a type of granite with interior walls of brick and stone. The state capitol cost over $532,000 to build, and the completion of the project was celebrated during a festival in the capital city on June 1840.

    In 1888, the Supreme Court and State Library moved to their own buildings and the General Assembly moved to the State Legislature Building in 1963. Today, only the governor, lieutenant governor and their staff work in the building.
On the capitol's east grounds is the one of the ground's most declarative memorials - the North Carolina Vietnam War Memorial: Above. The north facade of the capitol, down the Fayetteville Street Mall, from the second floor of the NC General Assembly just before "the bottom falls out," buffeted by the North Carolina History Museum on the left and the North Carolina Museum of Natural History on the right, with a glimpse of Raleigh's Downtown Skyline in the background: Below.     photos by Stan Deatherage    Click the images to enlarge to as much as 1000 pixels wide.

    The Capitol houses the impressive Antonio Canova statue of George Washington in the rotunda and plaques honoring various North Carolina politicians. The outside includes three monuments honoring the three North Carolinian presidents: Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and James. K. Polk, as well as women of the Confederacy and war veterans. The Capitol was declared a historical landmark in 1973.

    Sources:

    "History of the North Carolina State Capitol." . N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar 2012. .

    "State Capitol." William S. Powell, ed. Encyclopedia of North Carolina (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, NC 2006).

    . "The North Carolina State Capitol: Pride of the State." . N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar 2012. .
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