Connecticut State Capitol

About this property

The Connecticut State Capitol is located north of Capitol Avenue and south of Bushnell Park in Hartford, the capital of Connecticut. The building houses the Connecticut General Assembly; the upper house, the State Senate, and lower house, the House of Representatives, as well as the office of the Governor of the State of Connecticut. The Connecticut Supreme Court occupies a building (built 1908–1910) across Capitol Avenue. The current building is the third capitol building for the State of Connecticut since the American Revolution. The General Assembly of Connecticut (state legislature) met alternately in Hartford and New Haven since before the American Revolution. When in Hartford, the General Assembly met in the Old State House, designed in 1792 by Charles Bulfinch, and when sitting in New Haven, in a State House designed in 1827 by Ithiel Town. After the Civil War, the complications of this plan began to be evident, and both Hartford and New Haven competed to be sole state capital. Hartford won, and the new sole capital needed one central capitol building. The General Assembly authorized a million dollar project, and two competitors, James G. Batterson and Richard M. Upjohn, vied to be awarded the project. Upjohn won, but Batterson, a stone importer and merchant and not an architect, was named the building contractor. Batterson then continually revised the Upjohn plan to more and more closely resemble his own plan. The central tower, for example, is Batterson's, not Upjohn's. Batterson's extensive elaboration of Upjohn's plan ended up more than doubling the cost to over $2,500,000. Richard M. Upjohn's design is in the Eastlake style, with French and Gothic Revival styled elements. Construction of the building began in 1871. The building was completed in 1878, and it opened for the session of the General Assembly of Connecticut in January 1879. The New York Times described the newly constructed building: "a vast mass of white marble (is) this imposing structure, and in the dazzling sunshine of a New-England Summer noon sparkles like a fairy palace of frost work." The site of the Capitol was chosen since it is adjacent to Bushnell Park and had access to more surrounding open space than the older building in the immediate downtown. The site was originally the location of the old Trinity College and was then known as "Trinity Hill", and the city street to the immediate east is still named Trinity Street. (Trinity College relocated to a new campus south of the downtown.) Some galleries on the building's main floor hold historical artifacts, principally battle standards of Civil War units. The flags were deposited with the state by 10,000 of the state's veterans, who formed a procession to the Capitol, and deposited 30 regimental flags on September 17, 1879. This action was taken to make the building a memorial to the Civil War.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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