Vermont State House: Three Attempts to Get It Right

Vermont took three tries to build its state house. The first, completed in eighteen oh eight, was a wood-frame structure that served the young republic's legislature for about twenty years before it became too small and worn out. The second went up in granite in eighteen thirty-eight, a more dignified building with a Doric portico and a rounded dome. That one lasted until January sixth of eighteen fifty-seven, when a fire originating in the heating system gutted it overnight.

Boston architect Thomas Silloway designed the current building in eighteen fifty-seven and fifty-eight, and the legislature occupied it in eighteen fifty-nine. The construction cost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and drew heavily on Barre granite, quarried from the mountains a few miles east, a material that has come to define Vermont craftsmanship worldwide. The design blends Greek Revival formality with local materials, and it has not changed substantially since.

The gold dome is the thing people notice first. Its structure is actually wood, built to look like stone, and it was originally capped with copper painted red. In nineteen oh six the dome was gilded for the first time, and real gold leaf has covered it ever since. Standing atop the dome is a gilded wooden statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. The original version was carved by Vermont sculptor Larkin Mead in eighteen fifty eight, though it has been replaced more than once since, a fitting symbol for a state whose economy ran on farms and dairy for most of its history.

Montpelier chose this hilltop site to signal its impartiality between the eastern and western sides of the Green Mountains, and on a clear day the dome catches afternoon light in a way that seems almost deliberate.