Texas State Capitol

When the State Constitutional Convention convened in Austin, November 20, 1875, they resolved to appropriate a 3,000,000-acre section of the public domain to use as payment for a new state capitol. February 20, 1879, the Legislature passed an act providing for the designation and surveying of 3,050,000 acres of unappropriated public domain to pay for the Capitol and other necessary state buildings. Then, April 18, 1879, the Legislature passed the act which provided for the actual building of the Capitol, and for the surveying of the public land. They chose an area in northwest Texas, on the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain, and considered that they would make a good deal by trading arid lands for a Capitol building.

The old State Capitol burned on November 9, 1881, and the State hastened its plans for the new building. The State appointed Joseph Lee and N.L. Norton Capitol Commissioners, and J.N. Preston was superintendent of construction. Super-visors included W.D, Clark and R.K. Walker. The State hired Napoleon Le Brun, a New York City architect, to choose the best design of those submitted. He selected the plans of E.E. Myers of Detroit, who furnished the completed architectural blueprints. Then the State advertised for bids from center and despite the large amount of land offered, only two contracting firms submitted bids to build the Capitol. Mattheas Schnell of Rock Island, Illinois, was chosen over A.A. Burck of Rockdale, Texas. Schnell was a member of the Capitol Syndicate of Chicago Illinois, which was composed of Col. A.C. Babcock, president; John V. and John S. Farwell; and Abner Taylor. Soon after Schnell was awarded the contract, he assigned all his interest in the agreement to Taylor, Babcock, and Co., and they in turn assigned the contract to Abner Taylor, who filed bond for $250,000 to carry out the terms of the agreement. The State agreed to give the Syndicate the West Texas acreage as they fulfilled the contract and completed the Capitol building.

The ground-breaking ceremony was held on February 1, 1882, and by the fall of that year, a small town had grown up on the grounds to accommodate the workers. A year later the excavation had become such a curiosity that a wire fence had to be erected around the site and permits issued to watchers at the entrance. On March 2, 1885, the 49th anniversary of Texas independence, the 16,000-pound cornerstone was laid with day-long ceremonies and a crowd of nearly 20,000 people.

Construction of the building progressed using limestone for the exterior from the Oak Hill quarry nine miles southwest of Austin. In 1885 a controversy arose over the limestone when the first large block to arrive was not up to the standards that had been decided upon. In addition, the contractor decided that the Oak Hill quarry was not large enough to produce all the limestone that would eventually be needed, and that the stone developed rust-colored streaks after several years' exposure. Taylor submitted a limestone sample from Bedford, Indiana, but Governor John Ireland disagreed with Taylor's choice on the grounds that the change violated two principles. First, the use of Indiana limestone would necessitate a change in the appropriation of state funds and the original contract. Second, the building commission had voted to use Texas materials as much as possible. Ireland favored the use of red granite, and owners of a quarry at Marble Falls offered to donate the stone necessary to complete the exterior walls of the Capitol. At the insistence of the con-tractor, the State agreed to build a fifteen-mile tapline from Burnet and the Northwestern Railroad to the quarry, and to provide the service of 500 able-bodied convicts to work the quarry. The contractor agreed to furnish food, pay, quarters, and the transportation for the convicts. The state's agreement to hire convicts caused the International Association of Granite Cutters to boycott the construction. Gus Wilke, sub-contractor in charge, was unable to continue without stone cutters, and so he brought sixty-two trained cutters to Texas from Scotland for $4.00 a day wages, Wilke's move was a violation of the Alien Contract Labor Law, and eventually the Capitol Syndicate had to pay a fine of more than $8,000.

Construction of the Capitol walls continued without more difficulty. The exterior was red granite and the interior was native stone. The interior dome was made in Charleri, Belgium, for $250,000 and the iron for the rest of the structure above the fourth floor was also imported from Belgium. It was necessary to call in B.M. Harrod of New Orleans, Nicholas J. Clayton of Galveston, and Eugene T. Heiner of Houston as consulting architects in the last stages of construction. The brick work on the fourth floor and bet:ween the lower iron work of the dome was not adequately supported and the walls were structurally unsound. The architects concurred with the decision of Gus Wilke to eliminate some of the brick interlining, and the difficulty was solved. The State ordered a zinc statue of the Goddess of Liberty from the Friedley-Voshardt Company of Chicago, and in January of 1888, the roof was finished with the placement of the statue on the dome cupola. Opening celebrations were held in May.

Recorded Texas Historic Landmark- 1964.