The Wisconsin State Capitol

From almost anywhere in Madison you can see the dome. That’s by design, and by law.

Three capitols in Madison

Wisconsin’s first territorial legislature met in 1836 in a rented building at Belmont. The next year the legislature chose Madison, then “merely a town on paper,” as the permanent capital ¹. The first Madison capitol, of local stone and oak, cost $60,000; it was soon too small, and a second, larger capitol went up from 1857, with its dome finished in 1869 and two wings added in the 1880s ¹.

In 1903 the legislature appointed a commission to plan a third. Before it got far, on February 27, 1904, fire gutted much of the old building ¹.

Built one wing at a time

In 1906 the commission chose George B. Post of New York, an engineer-architect who had helped pioneer steel-framed tall buildings in Manhattan ¹. Money was limited and government had to keep working somewhere, so the new building rose one wing at a time, replacing the old one piece by piece ¹:

Post died in 1913, and his sons finished the job ¹. The building and its power plant cost about $7.25 million; when it was finished in 1917 it housed all of state government ^{2 3}. With World War I under way, the dedication was put off, and it didn’t happen until July 7, 1965, forty-eight years later ¹.

Beaux-Arts on the isthmus

The Capitol sits on the highest point of the isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, at the center of Madison’s original street plan, so all roads seem to lead to it ³. It went up during the great age of American capitol building, 1893 to 1920, in the spirit of the City Beautiful movement launched by Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which Post had worked on ^{3 1}.

Post’s plan is a Greek cross: four equal wings pointing to the compass directions, with semicircular pavilions in the angles between them. Madison’s four diagonal avenues end at the pavilions, each with a grand staircase and a curved row of Ionic columns ³. The wings end in porticoes of Corinthian columns with sculpture groups by the leading American sculptors of the day.

The whole exterior is white Bethel granite from Vermont, as white as marble but far harder ². The rusticated ground story (stone cut with deep horizontal grooves), giant columns, rich moldings, framed windows, and statuary are the hallmarks of Beaux-Arts classicism, the grand style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris ³.

The dome

The dome, finished in 1915, rises 162 feet above the 84-foot wings. The state calls it the only granite dome in the United States and the largest by volume ². It is really two domes: an outer shell of granite blocks eight inches thick, and an inner, shallow coffered dome seen from the rotunda, with Edwin Blashfield’s mural The Resources of Wisconsin around the opening at its center ³.

On top stands “Wisconsin,” a gilded bronze figure by Daniel Chester French, the sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial’s Lincoln: 15 feet 5 inches tall, over 3 tons, with a badger on her helmet and a globe and eagle in her hand ². From the ground floor to the top of her head the building measures 284.4 feet, just three feet and half an inch shorter than the U.S. Capitol ².

Keeping the view

In 1966 the 14-story Van Hise Hall on the UW campus stood out against the skyline, and the outrage led to a height limit ⁴. Today state law says no building within one mile of the center of the Capitol may rise above 1,032.8 feet above sea level, which matches the city’s rule that nothing may top the base of the dome’s columns ⁴. That’s why downtown Madison’s towers all stop below the same line, leaving the dome on top.

Try it

Guided tours have run since 1915 ¹, and in summer the lowest observation deck around the dome is open to the public ². Walk around the outside first and find the parts of the plan: a wing ending in its Corinthian portico, a curved pavilion facing an avenue, and the dome over the center. Then from the observation deck, notice how the surrounding buildings all stop short of you.