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 Statehouses 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 for the bulk of the contemporary and historic photos, postcards, and drawings that appear here.  Credit should also be given 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.

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 regularly verifies and updates its collection of links, so any really dead or broken ones will not hang around for long.

Click on any picture to see an enlarged version, or to view the other historic images available in the Cupolas of Capitalism Picture Gallery.  For additional photographic coverage of the state capitol buildings, the CapitolShots Collection from capitol hobbyist Kevin McCrea, and the state capitols project from photographer Edward Crim, are both excellent resources.

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, and this photograph from the Juneau, Alaska, Capital City Homepage.

Conceptual plans for the new Alaska State Capitol Building may be found on the Alaska Capitol Design Competition 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.