Huey Long's Skyscraper

Governor Huey Long wanted a new state capitol, and he had a very specific instruction for the architects: it had to be a tower. Not a dome. Not a classical temple. A tower, reaching as high as they could build it.

The architects from the firm of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth delivered. The Louisiana State Capitol opened in nineteen thirty-two, and it stood four hundred fifty feet tall. Thirty-four stories of Art Deco limestone, rising above the Baton Rouge bluffs like something that had been transplanted from a Manhattan skyline. It remains today the tallest state capitol building in the United States, by a considerable margin.

Long himself declared it comparable in architecture to only one building in the world: Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome. He was not known for false modesty.

The building cost five million dollars during the depths of the Great Depression. It employed thousands of workers. The limestone facade carries sculptural friezes depicting Louisiana's history and sculpture by Lorado Taft and others. Inside, Memorial Hall carries murals and a bronze relief map of Louisiana.

Huey Long wanted a tower because towers make a statement. He had spent his career arguing that Louisiana's old planter elite had kept the state poor, its roads unpaved, its children unschooled, its people sick and uneducated. The new capitol was his argument in stone: that Louisiana could be modern, could be ambitious, could reach as high as anywhere else in the country.

Whether you agreed with his methods, the building is genuinely impressive. From the observation deck near the top, you can see the Mississippi River curving away in both directions, and the refinery stacks of the chemical corridor to the south, and the campus of LSU. Huey Long is buried on the grounds below, in a sunken garden in front of his tower.