Illinois State Capitol

This site is dedicated toward the promotion of the Illinois Capitol Building and is intended to serve as an informational and educational resource for its visitors.

Its creators have worked in the Capitol for a combined 40 years and are interested in the history of the building and efforts to preserve it for future generations.

We hope you enjoy your on-line journey through the halls of one of the great state Capitols in the United States of America.

The Illinois State Capitol, located in Springfield, Illinois, is the building that houses the executive and legislative branches of the government of the U.S. state of Illinois. The current building is the sixth capitol of the state since its admission as a state of the United States in 1818. The current capitol is in the architectural style of the French Renaissance. The capitol was designed by Cochrane and Garnsey, an architecture and design firm based in Chicago, Illinois. Ground was first broken for the new capitol on March 11, 1869, and it was completed twenty years later for a total cost of $4,500,000.

The capitol dome is covered in zinc to provide a silvery facade which does not weather. The interior of the dome features a plaster frieze painted to resemble bronze, which illustrates scenes from Illinois history, and stained glass windows (including a stained glass replica of the state seal in the oculus of the dome). The seal featured in the top of the dome is the seal used by Illinois prior to the American Civil War. It differs from the modern seal in that the phrase "State Sovereignty" is above the phrase "National Union." After the Civil War, the legislature voted to reverse these phrases as they professed that National Union was the more important of these two concepts.

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