The Gold Dome: New Jersey's State House

The gold dome rising above West State Street is newer than it looks, and older than most people guess. The New Jersey State House has occupied the same downtown block since seventeen ninety-two, making it the third-oldest state house in continuous legislative use in the United States. But the dome that defines the skyline came later.

The original building was modest. What replaced it grew over the following century through a series of additions, eighteen forty-five, eighteen sixty-five, eighteen seventy-one, each expansion reflecting the growing ambition of a state whose population and industry were exploding. Then, in March of eighteen eighty-five, fire destroyed the wing along West State Street. The reconstruction that followed produced the dome.

It was completed in eighteen eighty-nine, designed by architect Lewis Broome. The structure stands one hundred forty-five feet tall, built from cast iron and then covered in copper and gold leaf. The inscription circling the interior reads, in Latin: let justice be done though the heavens fall.

A century later, the dome needed saving. By the nineteen nineties, the gold leaf had deteriorated badly. New Jersey public schools launched a campaign called Dimes for the Dome. Schoolchildren collected coins, and the program helped fund a full restoration between nineteen ninety-six and nineteen ninety-nine. The restored dome received forty-eight thousand individual pieces of gold leaf.

Today the State House is in the middle of a three-hundred-million-dollar renovation that began in twenty seventeen. When you see that gold catching the afternoon light from the bridge, it is the work of schoolchildren.