The Capitol Building in Wisconsin is a prominent government building that houses the Wisconsin State Assembly, the Wisconsin State Senate, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and the Office of the Governor of Wisconsin. It is located in Madison, Wisconsin, and was built in the Beaux Arts style between 1906 and 1917 by architect George B. Post. This building is the fourth state capitol building to house the state government since Wisconsin’s establishment in 1848.
The first capitol building was in the village of Belmont, Wisconsin, where the Wisconsin Territory legislature met in a hastily constructed wood-frame building. The legislators then moved to Burlington, now in Iowa, until a capitol building could be built in Madison. The second capitol building, a Greek Revival-style building constructed in 1837, was the first state capitol of Wisconsin upon the state’s ascension to statehood in 1848. This building was demolished and replaced with a larger, Classical Revival-style structure with Romanesque Revival elements between 1857 and 1869, which was expanded in 1882. This building burned down in February 1904, which led to the construction of the present building on the same site.
The present capitol building is clad in Bethel white granite and is the tallest building in Madison. It has a Greek cross footprint with four wings, aligned with the compass directions and radial streets following the compass directions that slice through the surrounding street grid, which is at a 45-degree angle to compass directions, instead roughly paralleling the shorelines of nearby Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. This places the building at a unique orientation relative to the edges of Capitol Square and most buildings on adjacent streets.
The exterior of the wings features porticoes on the ends with Corinthian columns, arched windows on the third floor, rusticated bases with entrance doors and decorative keystones, decorative reliefs featuring festoons over the windows on the porticoes, cornices with modillions and dentils, and pediments with sculptural reliefs, created by several sculptors. On the east wing, which houses the Wisconsin Supreme Court, is a sculpture known as Law, created by Karl Bitter, while the west wing, which houses the chamber of the Wisconsin Assembly, features a sculpture known as Agriculture, also created by Karl Bitter. The north wing, which is home to a hearing chamber, features the sculpture known as Virtues and Traits of Character, created by Adolph Alexander Weinman, and the south wing, which houses the chamber of the Wisconsin Senate, features the sculpture known as Wisdom and Learning of the World, created by Attilio Piccirilli.
The center of the building is the rotunda, which is topped with a large dome that rises from a tall base. The dome is the largest in the world to be entirely clad in granite. The building underwent a major renovation in the 1970s that added modern features to the interior and covered up many original features, with later projects between 1988 and 2002 that restored the building while updating the building’s systems and functions for the modern needs of the state government.
Overall, the Capitol Building in Wisconsin is an impressive structure that represents the state’s governmental power and history. Its unique design and impressive architecture make it a notable landmark of the city of Madison, Wisconsin.