Nashville, Tennessee: Tennessee State Capitol

Published by Jane Appel on

June 7, 2022

Construction began on the Tennessee capitol in 1845; the building opened in 1859. It is one of the oldest working capitols in the U.S. and was designed by William Strickland who helped establish the Greek Revival movement in this country.

The exterior of the capitol was built with Bigby-Cannon limestone from the Nashville area. It was excavated, shaped and transported by enslaved African Americans and convict labor. The limestone deteriorated and was replaced in the 1950’s with limestone from Indiana.
These column components were part of the original Tennessee Capitol.
Tennessee’s capitol features a Greek-style drum tower instead of a dome.
House of Representatives
The Tennessee house has 99 members.
House chamber from the gallery
Columns in the House are almost 22 feet high and are made of Nashville limestone.
Senate chamber from the gallery
The Tennessee Senate has 33 members.
Lights in both chambers were made by Cornelius and Baker in Philadelphia. This one has 30 globes and features corn, elk horns, cotton blossoms and tobacco leaves.
The Supreme Court room was restored to its 1850’s look in 1988 and is now used for briefings.
A painting in the Supreme Court room features notable Tennesseans. In front are jazz musician W.C. Handy; highly-decorated World War I soldier Alvin C. York; investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett; and Tennessee’s first governor John Sevier. In the second row are the longest serving Secretary of State in the U.S. Cordell Hull; women’s suffrage activist Anne Dallas Dudley; former U.S. Presidents James K. Polk, Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson; frontiersman, soldier and politician Davy Crockett; and Cherokee syllabary (written language) creator Sequoyah. Michael Sloan is the artist.
The state library is still in use although the spiral staircase is not.
This ceiling fresco was painted by John Schleicher and Theo knock in 1858 and is titled “Westward Expansion”. We withhold comment.
Bust of Sequoyah who created the syllabary for the Cherokee language
This bas-relief was created by Alan LeQuire in 1995 to commemorate the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 36 states had to approve the amendment for it to be ratified and Tennessee was the 36th. The measure passed, we were told by our tour guide, after Representative Harry Burn changed his vote at the last minute, having received a letter from his mother urging him to “be a good boy” and vote for suffrage.
Categories: Travel

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