Pennsylvania Capitol

The Pennsylvania State Capitol is the seat of government for the U.S. state of Pennsylvania located in downtown Harrisburg which was designed by architect Joseph Miller Huston in 1902 and completed in 1906 in a Beaux-Arts style with decorative Renaissance themes throughout. The capitol houses the legislative chambers for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the Harrisburg chambers for the Supreme and Superior Courts of Pennsylvania, as well as the offices of the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor. It is also the main building of the Pennsylvania State Capitol Complex.

The seat of government for the state was initially in Philadelphia, then was relocated to Lancaster in 1799 and finally to Harrisburg in 1812. The current capitol, known as the Huston Capitol, is the third state capitol building built in Harrisburg. The first, the Hills Capitol, was destroyed in 1897 by a fire. The second, the Cobb Capitol, was left unfinished when funding was discontinued in 1899.

President Theodore Roosevelt attended the building's dedication in 1906. After its completion, the capitol project was the subject of a graft scandal. The construction and subsequent furnishing cost three times more than the General Assembly had appropriated for the design and construction; architect Joseph Huston and four others were convicted of ''graft'' for price gouging.

The Pennsylvania State Capitol is often referred to as a "palace of art" because of its many sculptures, murals, and stained-glass windows, most of which are Pennsylvania-themed or Pennsylvanian-made. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006; the boundaries of the designation were expanded to include the Capitol Complex in 2013 with the capitol as a contributing property.

History

William Penn formed the first government of the then-Province of Pennsylvania on October 28, 1682, in Chester, Pennsylvania. The government did not have a regular meeting place and often met in Quaker meeting houses or at private residences in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania's first statehouse, now known as Independence Hall, was built in Philadelphia starting in 1732 and was completed in 1753. With both the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the First and Second Continental Congresses, and the Confederation Congress, three predecessors of the modern Congress of the United States occupying Independence Hall from 1774 to 1789, the state legislature considered proposals for moving the seat of the state government. John Harris Jr. offered to give and 21  square perches (5,717 ft²; 531 m²) of land near the banks of the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania to the state, provided that it be eventually used as the site of the capital. Harris also laid out a city in 1785, near his plot of land, and named it in honor of his father. In 1799, the legislature voted to relocate the capital to Lancaster instead of Harrisburg, because of Lancaster's greater population. From 1799 to 1812, the legislature resided in Lancaster at the Old City Hall.

Hills Capitol

The legislature voted in 1810 to relocate the capital again and moved the seat of government to Harrisburg in October 1812 onto the land originally given by Harris a decade earlier. An additional was also purchased from United States Senator William Maclay. The legislature met in the old Dauphin County courthouse for the next decade until a new capitol was constructed. A competition was held to determine the design of the capitol starting in 1816, which "was the first formal contest for esigningan American statehouse." The designs submitted, including one from William Strickland, were rejected as being too expensive. Another contest was started in January 1819. Of the seventeen designs submitted, two were selected as semifinalists. One was from Harrisburg architect Stephen Hills, and the other was from the designer of the Washington Monument, Robert Mills; Hills' design was selected. Hills had designed a "red-brick, Federal-style" capitol to "architecturally represent the function of democratic government." Construction began on the Hills Capitol in 1819, and it was completed in 1822. The capitol's construction and subsequent furnishing were estimated to have cost $244,500. The Hills Capitol was visited by famous people, including the Marquis de Lafayette in 1825 and Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, (later King Edward VII) in 1860. Abraham Lincoln visited the capitol in 1861 as president-elect, and then his body lay in state thereafter his 1865 assassination. Pennsylvania's collection of Civil War battle flags, which were accumulated in 1866, was moved from the State Arsenal to the second floor of the capitol in 1872. The flags were moved, again, in 1895 to the Executive, Library, and Museum Building. On February 2, 1897, smoke was discovered from the Lieutenant Governor's offices around noon. By early evening, the Hills Capitol had been reduced to a "smoldering mass of debris".

Cobb Capitol

After the destruction of the Hills Capitol, the now "homeless" legislature moved to a nearby Methodist Church. There were soon demands that the capital be relocated to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia; the legislature quickly appropriated money to build a new capitol in Harrisburg. Governor Daniel H. Hastings opted for a pay-as-you-go policy to allow the construction costs to be spread over multiple annual budgets. Governor Hastings also figured that $550,000 was enough to build "a small legislative building" that could be added onto as needed over time. After building designs were submitted by various architects in another competition, Henry Ives Cobb was chosen in 1897 to design the new capitol. Construction of the Cobb Capitol began on May 2, 1898. The legislature met in the finished building, which they had deemed complete, even though it was an "unadorned, unfinished, several-story brown brick structure that looked like a factory" on January 3, 1899. Cobb himself described the building simply as "ugly" but believed that he would be able to finish it eventually when more funding became available.

Huston Capitol

Governor William A. Stone appointed a new Capitol Building Commission in 1901. The commission then held another design competition for Pennsylvania architects only, which prevented Cobb, a Chicagoan, from submitting a design or finishing his capitol. The Building Commission also stipulated that parts of the unfinished, current capitol were to be used in the new capitol. The General Assembly had appropriated $4 million for the construction of the capitol. It did not limit the total amount to be used in furnishing the building. This caused problems after the construction completion of the capitol. The American Institute of Architects was opposed to competition, citing that the terms of the competition were "calculated to only 'encourage favoritism and injustice' and that they in no way obligated the Capitol uildingCommission to select the best design or the best architect." The Institute also advised that no Pennsylvania architects enter the competition; Philadelphia architect Addison Hutton was subsequently expelled from the organization after submitting an entry. Joseph Miller Huston's design was chosen from nine entries in the competition in January 1902.

The ground was broken for the Huston Capitol on November 2, 1902, but the cornerstone was not laid until May 5, 1904. Ownership of the capitol was handed over to the state government on August 15, 1906, and the Capitol Building Commission was dissolved.

Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker dedicated the new capitol on October 4, 1906. Former Governor Stone, who had become president of the Building Commission after leaving office, ceremoniously gave the key to the capitol to Governor Pennypacker. President Theodore Roosevelt, who had arrived earlier that morning by a special train to deliver a speech and tour the new capitol, declared it "the handsomest building I ever saw." The Pennsylvania, Northern Central, Reading, and Cumberland Valley railroads each ran special trains to accommodate the crowds traveling to and from Harrisburg for the dedication.

Although the building was completed, most of the artwork in and around the capitol would not be completed for another two decades. The murals in the rotunda were not installed until 1908, and the sculptures outside the entrance to the capitol were dedicated on October 4, 1911. The collection of Civil War flags were removed from the Executive, Library, and Museum Building. After a parade and a ceremony, they were installed in glass display cases in the capitol rotunda on June 14, 1914. The decoration of the capitol was completed on May 23, 1927, when the murals in the Supreme Court Chambers were unveiled.

Graft scandal

William H. Berry was elected in 1906, shortly after the dedication, to the office of State Treasurer on a reform "fusion ticket". Berry was the only Democrat elected to a statewide office from 1895 to 1934. Governor Pennypacker deemed his successful campaign to be "one of those freaks of ill fortune". Berry began investigating the costs of the capitol project and brought its $13 million pricetag to the attention of the public. Part of the reason for the discrepancy was Pennsylvania's "over-elaborate" and sometimes "unintelligible" method of "ordering and purchasing supplies, equipment ndfurnishings, commonly called the 'per-foot rule' ." Because the methods of measuring under the "per-foot rule" were not rigorously enforced, furnishing could be intentionally overpriced by the supplier. For example, a flagpole installed on the capitol roof was priced at $850; Berry estimated the value of the pole to have been only $150. Other expenses included $1,619 for a $125 bootblack stand and $3,257 for a $325 "mahogany case in the Senate barber shop".

Pennypacker tried to demonstrate that costs associated with the capitol were reasonable in comparison with similar notable structures. He pointed out that the United States Capitol cost $18 million, but had "fifty-five less ooms

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