Massachusetts State House

Massachusetts State House
National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark
Historic District Contributing Property
The Massachusetts State House
location	Boston , Massachusetts
Coordinates	42 ° 21 '27.7 "  N , 71 ° 3' 48.8"  W Coordinates: 42 ° 21 '27.7 "  N , 71 ° 3' 48.8"  W.
Built	1790-1795
architect	Charles Bulfinch , Charles Brigham (1898), Sturgis , Chapman & Andrews (1917)
Architectural style	Federal style
NRHP number	66000771
Data
The NRHP added	October 15, 1966
Declared as an  NHL	December 19, 1960

Stereoscopic image of the Massachusetts State House, circa 1862, before the side wings were added

Drawing from 1827 by Alexander Jackson Davis

The building at night

The Massachusetts State House , also Massachusetts Statehouse or New State House , is the state capitol and the seat of government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts . It is located in the district of Beacon Hill in Boston in the state of Massachusetts in the United States . The building houses the Massachusetts General Court and the offices of the Massachusetts Governor .

building

The State House is located on the highest point of Beacon Hill in Boston and is at the center of 7.6 acres or 27,000 square meters of land that once belonged to the first governor elected in Massachusetts, John Hancock . Before the completion of the current State House in 1798, the Old State House on Court Street served as the seat of government.

For the design of the building, the architect Charles Bulfinch was inspired by two buildings in London : the Somerset House by William Chambers and the Pantheon by James Wyatt .

A major extension of the original building was completed in 1895. The architect of this extension was Charles Brigham from Boston . In 1917 the east and west wings were completed, both of which were designed by the architects Sturgis , Chapman & Andrews.

dome

The original dome was made of wood and had leaked. Therefore, the entire outer surface of the dome was coated with copper in 1802 by Paul Revere's company . At the time, Revere was the first American who was able to successfully roll out copper in plates commercially.

The dome was initially painted gray and later light yellow and finally gilded with gold leaf in 1874 . During the Second World War , it was repainted with paint (it was black or gray depending on the source used) to avoid reflections during power outages and to protect the city and the building from bombing. It was not until 1997 that the dome was again gilded with 23- carat gold leaf at a price of 300,000 US dollars .

A pine cone sits on top of the dome, symbolizing both the historical importance of the Boston timber industry during the early colonial days and the state of Maine , which was a district of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts when Bulfinch completed "his" building.

Interior of the building

In clad with red brick main part of the building located at the western end of the offices of the governor and the hall beneath the dome, formerly the House of Representatives from Massachusetts was used, the meeting room of the is the Senate of Massachusetts . The House of Representatives now uses a room on the west side of the Brigham Wing as a boardroom. The Massachusetts holy cod hangs on the ceiling of this room - a three-foot- long representation of a cod carved from solid pine , symbolizing the paramount importance of the fishing industry for the early Massachusetts economy and the House of Representatives in 1784 by a Boston man Dealer was given.

The second floor under the dome is adorned with murals by the artist Edward Brodney . Brodney had won a competition for the first mural that the Works Progress Administration (WPA) had announced in 1936. The painting is titled Columbia Knighting Her World War Disabled . Like the WPA, Brodney couldn't afford to hire models financially, so friends and family posed for his pictures. His sister Norma Brodney Cohen was the model for Columbia , while the soldier kneeling in the foreground was his brother Fred Brodney. In 1938 he painted a second mural under the dome entitled World War Mothers . Here, too, mainly friends and relatives were the models, including his sister Norma and his mother Sarah.

Surroundings

Statues

In front of the building is a statue depicting General Joseph Hooker on horseback. Other statues represent Daniel Webster , Horace Mann and former US President John F. Kennedy . There are statues of Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer on the lawns below the east and west wings .

Special access

At the front of the main building, wide stairs lead from Beacon Street to Doric Hall within the building. The large main doors in this hall are only opened on three specific occasions:

1. When visiting the incumbent or a past President of the United States .
2. When the governor leaves the building on his last day at work. This tradition is known as the "Long Walk" and begins when the governor steps out of his office alone, goes down to the second floor and from there through Doric Hall through the main doors. From there he goes down the stairs, crosses the street and enters Boston Common , symbolically reuniting as a private citizen with the people of Massachusetts. In the recent past, however, there have been some breaks with the traditional process in this context. So on July 29, 1997 , Bill Weld stepped down the stairs and met his successor Paul Cellucci downstairs . Four years later, Cellucci could not enter the steps because extensive renovation work was being carried out on the front of the building. Jane Swift decided to take her family down the stairs before heading out for the Berkshire Mountains. On January 4, 2007, Deval Patrick took his oath of office at his explicit request on the stairs and gave his introductory speech there, which forced his predecessor Mitt Romney to do the Long Walk one day before his last day at work.
3. When a regimental flag is brought back from a combat mission. However, as the flags are now being returned to Washington, DC , this has not been done since the Vietnam War .

reception

literature

One of Boston's most enduring and well-known nicknames is The Hub of the Universe . This goes back to a comment by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. , which he made in his 1858 essay The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table on the State House:

“A jaunty-looking person [...] said there was one more wise man's saying that he had heard; it was about our place - but he didn't know who said it. [...] Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crow-bar. "

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr .: The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Movies

In the feature film The Verdict - The Truth and Nothing But Truth , the interior of the State House serves as a backdrop for both a courtroom and a hospital. In addition, the State House appears prominently in the film Departed as a symbol of the ambition of the antagonist Colin Sullivan.

literature

• Arthur Milnor Bridgman: A souvenir of Massachusetts legislators 1907 . Self-published, Stoughton, MA 1907, OCLC 49319927 .
• Harold Kirker: The architecture of Charles Bulfinch . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1969, ISBN 978-0-674-04390-9 .

Web links

Commons : Massachusetts State House  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

• A tour of the Massachusetts State House
• Cupolas of Capitalism. State Capitol Building Histories (L-ME). In: Cupola.com. Retrieved November 2, 2011 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Massachusetts. National Park Service , accessed August 11, 2019.
2. ^ Douglass Shand-Tucci: Built in Boston . city ​​and suburb, 1800-2000. revised and expanded edition. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst 1999, ISBN 978-1-55849-201-1 , pp. 6 .
3. ↑ Marcus Whiffen; Frederick Koeper: American architecture, 1607-1976 . MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1981, ISBN 978-0-262-23105-3 .
4. ^ Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: A Tour of the Grounds of the Massachusetts State House. (PDF; 46 kB) Retrieved on November 2, 2011 (English, guided tour around the building). 
5. ^ Massachusetts State House. In: Boston Discovery Guide. Retrieved November 2, 2011 . 
6. ^ The Freedom Trail Foundation: Massachusetts State House. In: cityofboston.gov. Retrieved November 2, 2011 . 
7. ↑ Ernest W. Roberts; James A. Gallivan; Richard W. Irwin et al .: A history of the emblem of the codfish in the hall of the House of representatives . Wright and Potter printing co., State printers, Boston 1895, OCLC 6701383 ( online [accessed November 2, 2011]).
8. ^ Douglas Martin: Edward Brodney, 92, Who Painted War Scenes. In: The New York Times . August 19, 2002, accessed November 2, 2011 . 
9. ↑ Boston Women's Heritage Trail: DOWNTOWN WALK. Retrieved November 2, 2011 . 
10. ↑ Frank Phillips; Andrea Estes: Patrick vows inclusion in inaugural address. In: Boston.com. January 5, 2007, accessed November 2, 2011 . 
11. ↑ Norman Dalager: What's in a nickname? In: Boston.com. Retrieved November 2, 2011 . 
12. ↑ Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table . Phillips, Sampson, Boston 1858, OCLC 283456 ( full text in Google Book Search [accessed November 2, 2011]).