Secrets of the golden dome at the State House
What’s going on inside can be gloomy, but the State House dome keeps sparkling.
Native Bostonians may find themselves regularly passing by this architectural marvel without so much as a second glance: the State House’s golden dome. Wentworth Institute of Technology Associate History Professor Ella Howard says this is a mistake.
“It’s such a fascinating building,” she said. “Those of us who live in Boston, we don’t always take the time to appreciate the things that the tourists see when they come.”
Howard regularly takes students on walking tours of the city, and they’re always “really happy” to see the brilliant dome. “But not all of them have really looked at it,” she said.
Massachusetts’ golden dome is just one of 11 atop state capitol buildings, with the other states being Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
“It is a symbol of government and power and has these very strong ties to antiquity,” Howard said of the golden domes.
The Massachusetts State House was designed by Charles Bulfinch, regarded by many as the first American-born architect, and completed in 1798 in a neoclassical style. Bulfinch modeled the building on Greek and Roman architecture, which was also popular in London at the time, Howard said.
When the dome was first completed, it was purely wooden, which led to rainwater leaks and structural issues. To fix the issue, Paul Revere and Sons made sheets of copper to cover the leaky dome and also protect against insects, based on common shipbuilding techniques at the time. Howard said the dome was first painted gray, then yellow, before it was eventually gilded in ultra-thin 23-karat gold leaf in 1874 for $2,900 at the time. The dome was painted dark gray during World War II so it wouldn’t attract the attention of potential enemy ships or planes.
In 1997, the dome was regilded for over $300,000, or about $537,000 in today’s dollars, as part of a larger
dome and lantern restoration project, at a total cost of $1.6 million. Gold leaf cannot be cleaned, so the gilding will eventually need to be replaced. New Hampshire recently regilded its golden dome with 4.5 pounds of gold leaf at a total project cost of $2.4 million.
Cheryl Morrissey, an engineer for the state, told
WCVB in 2013 that the State House underwent a $400,000 project to restore the cupola and pinecone atop the dome by regilding the pinecone and installing a lightning rod inside. The pinecone, a symbol of the state’s natural resources that helped the earliest settlers to survive, was regilded in 23karat gold imported from
Italy.
Howard reminded the Herald that the building is not only a workplace for lawmakers. It’s also a public building – and was the last State House in the country to reopen to the public after COVID-19 began.
“It’s very much a functional building,” she said. “But also a symbolic building.”