The Wisconsin State Capitol Building, built in 1906-1917, is a Beaux Arts-style building designed by architect George B. Post to house the state government. It is the fourth capitol building to house the state government since the state’s establishment in 1848 and replaced the previous state capitol, built in 1857-1869 and expanded in 1882, which burned down in February of 1904. The capitol houses both the Wisconsin State Assembly and the Wisconsin State Senate, as well as the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Office of the Governor of Wisconsin.
The building features a greek cross footprint with four five-story 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, with Downtown Madison sitting on an isthmus between the two lakes. This places the building at a unique 45-degree angle orientation relative to the edges of Capitol Square and most buildings on adjacent streets.
The exterior of the building’s wings feature 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, which were created by several sculptors, and have different symbolism embodied by their design. The sides of the wings feature simpler cornices with dentils, pilasters, and recessed window openings with arched openings at the ground floor, windows with decorative pedimented headers on the second floor, arched windows on the third floor, two small two-over-two windows on the fourth floor, and a recessed fifth floor features small paired windows, hidden behind a balustrade that runs around the entirety of the building minus the ends of the wings, concealing a low-slope roof at the setbacks on the sides of the wings and above the corner porticoes.
The upper roofs of the wings are low-slope with front gabled portions in the middle punctured by skylights, with the roof being almost entirely enclosed by a parapet. At the center of the building in the inside corners of the Greek cross are semi-circular portions of the facade with semi-circular two-story ionic porticos with large terraces and grand staircases featuring decorative copper lampposts, decorative stone balustrades, concealed entrances to the ground floor underneath the terraces, and three doorways on the upper level, with drums surrounded by buttresses featuring small windows and domed roofs above the balustrade on the fifth floor.
In 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 and is the tallest building in Madison, with a state law passed in 1990 stipulating that any building within a one-mile radius of the capitol is limited in height to the base of the columns of the dome, which stand at 187 feet, preserving the visibility of the building from the surrounding landscape.
The exterior of the building is clad in Bethel white granite, sourced from Vermont, with an additional 42 types of stone from a total of eight states and six countries being utilized on the interior of the building. The dome is topped with a statue, sculpted in 1920 by Daniel Chester French, of a personification of the state of Wisconsin, with the outstretched arm of the statue representing the state motto, “Forward”.
The capitol building has gone through several renovation and restoration projects over the years to update the building’s systems and functions for the modern needs of the state government while preserving the original design and historical significance of the building.