This portion of Cupola site chronicles the rich and often colorful architectural history of the American State Capitol Buildings.  Perhaps no other secular building type is so closely affiliated with dome and cupola designs, or use them as effectively as symbols of unity and power.

States with Capitol Buildings featuring prominent exterior cupolas are highlighted in yellow.  These include former State Houses still standing in the current capital city.  Former State Capitol Buildings existing elsewhere are not covered here.  States possessing Capitol Buildings with other cupola-like forms like domes, drums, and towers in their designs are so noted in their building descriptions.

Historical information presented in this section has been compiled from various State Government and Historical Society websites, with Eldon Hauck's comprehensive 1991 book, American Capitols, as a primary source.  Picture credits are included both on the pages of the accompanying Picture Gallery, and, more briefly, in the "mouse-over" descriptions associated with each image.  The Library of Congress, Chris Miller, Pat and Debbi Furrie, Robert Dolton, Les Center, and Bill Hazzard must be credited along with Howard, Bruce and Les Partridge for the bulk of the contemporary and historic photos, postcards, and drawings that appear here.  Credit is also due to the hard-working content providers whose sites enhance the building descriptions via offsite links.  Many offer greatly expanded coverage of individual capitol buildings and their grounds.  Of course Wikipedia also offers a growing wealth of info on the state capitols.  It draws from its own group of contributors, with this site sometimes credited as one of the source references for their articles.

Please note that at any given moment, a few of the offsite links found here will be offline.  This is the nature of links, web servers, and the ever changing Internet.  Links to government sites are most prone to fail on weekends, or sometimes, after newly elected officials take power.  Most bounce back within a day or two, but not always.  Cupola verifies and updates its collection of links periodically, so any really dead or broken ones do get weeded out eventually.

Also note that the 3D view links rely on browser plug-ins from Google Earth and, to a lesser degree, MS Bing Maps 3D.  Even with these plug-ins installed, 3D view links can be quirky in their operation.  The satellite, bird's eye, street, and 3D model view links normally work without plug-ins, but they can be quirky in their operation as well.  The compatibility of each view type with different browsers and hardware varies.  Depending on your computing environment, you may find the view links fully or only partially operational, or not working at all.  When first called up, they may unaccountably reposition the view, change the zoom level, or suppress the display of the desired capitol building model.  Sometimes going back and selecting the view link again or switching between different view types will correctly update the display.  The Google 3D view link typically degrades from Google Earth view to a distant map or satellite view when not fully compatible with the browser or video card.  This will also occur when Google Maps runs in "lite" or "classic" modes, rather than "full 3D" mode.  Google offers this link as a way to force Google Maps back into "full 3D" mode when it is so capable.

Click on any picture to see an enlarged version, or to view the other historic images available under the Cupolas of Capitalism Picture Gallery.  For additional photographic coverage of the state capitols, the state capitols project, from photographer Edward Crim, and Capitolshots Photography, are both excellent resources.  A search on the Flickr.com website may reveal other state capitol photos, including copyright and usage info specific to each image.

An Art Deco block with classical elements.  Flat topped and approx. 118 feet tall.  Picture and more info offsite, in this official Alaska State Capitol Building description, and this illustrated history, complete with a visitor brochure and video tours.  Also available is this QuickTime panorama, from Virtual Guidebooks (favors viewing via Firefox browser), and this photograph from the Juneau, Alaska, Capital City Homepage.

Thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, some of the conceptual plans from the Alaska Capitol Design Competition are still available online despite the disappearance of the original project website.  Morphosis had been the only competition finalist to submit a design that incorporated a large dome, although the proposal from Moshe Safdie had at least featured a clever abstraction of the form.  For an architectural perspective on the project, see Marianne Cusato's critique in the Town Paper, an urban design publication.