Featured Article Summary #270

The Pennsylvania State Capitol is the center of government for Pennsylvania and is located in downtown Harrisburg. Designed by Joseph Miller Huston, it was built in a Beaux-Arts style with Renaissance-inspired decorations and completed in 1906. The building contains the legislature and key court chambers, along with offices for the governor and lieutenant governor, making it the main structure of the Capitol Complex. Before this capitol was built, the state government moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799 and then to Harrisburg in 1812; the first Harrisburg capitol was destroyed by fire in 1897, and the second was left unfinished after funding stopped. After President Theodore Roosevelt attended the dedication, the project later became involved in a graft scandal when costs rose far beyond what lawmakers had approved and Huston and others were convicted of price gouging. Today, the Capitol is known for its art, including sculptures, murals, and stained glass, and it is listed as a historic landmark and part of a larger protected historic area. William Penn set up the first government of Pennsylvania in 1682, and it met wherever was available, usually Quaker meeting houses or private homes in Philadelphia. Land was bought for the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), with construction starting in 1732 and finishing in 1753. Independence Hall served as the meeting place for major governing bodies from 1774 to 1789, and later the legislature considered moving the capital—ultimately relocating it to Lancaster in 1799 due to Lancaster’s larger population, where it stayed until 1812. In 1810 the legislature voted to move Pennsylvania’s capital to Harrisburg, and it officially relocated in October 1812, using land originally donated by Harris plus an additional 10 acres purchased from Senator William Maclay. A design competition for a new capitol began in 1816 and was followed by another in 1819, when Stephen Hills’ Federal-style design was chosen and construction ran from 1819 to 1822. The finished Hills Capitol cost about $244,500 and hosted many famous visitors, including Lafayette, Prince Albert Edward (later King Edward VII), and Abraham Lincoln. Civil War battle flags were displayed there in 1872, but in 1897 a fire started in the lieutenant governor’s offices and by evening the building was left as a smoldering pile of debris. After the Hills Capitol was destroyed, the legislature temporarily met in a nearby Methodist Church. Money was quickly approved to build a new capitol in Harrisburg using a pay-as-you-go plan, and Henry Ives Cobb was chosen as the architect in 1897. Construction started in 1898, and although the legislature moved into the building in 1899, it was unfinished and plain, which Cobb called “ugly” but expected to improve as more funds arrived. In 1901, Governor William A. Stone appointed a new Capitol Building Commission that held a Pennsylvania-only design competition, which prevented Chicago architect Cobb from finishing his plan. Joseph Miller Huston’s design was selected, after which construction began in 1902 and the capitol was handed to the state in 1906 and dedicated that October. Although the building opened in 1906, much of its art and decoration—including murals, sculptures, and Civil War flag displays—was added over the following decades, with the final murals unveiled in 1927.