Connecticut's New State Capitol

By David M. Roth

The Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford, an impressive building of marble and granite on grounds overlooking Bushnell Park, reflects the pride with which Connecticuters regard the state's rich historical heritage. Via tympana, medallions, and statues, the Capitol celebrates the achievements of such Connecticut worthies as the Reverend Thomas Hooker (c. 1586-1647), Governor John Winthrop, Jr. (1605/1606-1676), Roger Sherman (1721-1793), Revolutionary War Governor Jonathan Trumbull (1710-1785), Noah Webster (1758-1843), General Joseph Hawley (1826-1905), Civil War Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles (1802-1878), and United States Senator Orville Hitchcock Platt (1827-1905). The building's distinctive dome is encircled by twelve statues which represent Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Music, Science, and Force. While in the 1980's the Connecticut State Capitol is accordingly viewed as a classic structure in the state's historical and architectural heritage, an irony is that the building was located in Hartford and constructed only during and after furious controversies.

Connecticut had two capitals—Hartford and New Haven—from the 1660s when the Colony of New Haven—was integrated into Connecticut. The Connecticut General Assembly sat in each city every second year, in New Haven meeting in an Ithiel Town (1784-1844) building (c. 1830) that resembled a Greek temple and in Hartford meeting at the Old State House (1796) designed by Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844). By the mid-nineteenth century, with Connecticut's governmental functions expanding in the face of industrialization and urbanization, the two-capital arrangement came to be viewed as anachronistic. Unfortunately, the growing resolution to end the arrangement was complicated because of competition between New Haven and Hartford to become the state's sole capital.

The competition moved toward a climax in the early 1870s. In 1870 Hartford offered the State of Connecticut $500,000 toward the building of a Hartford Capitol. The state's voters declared a winner in the contest by a referendum in 1873. Hartford won with some 37,000 votes to 31,000 for New Haven, with only New Haven and Fairfield counties strongly supporting New Haven. With Hartford's selection, the City of Hartford was authorized by the General Assembly to issue $1,000,000 in bonds to meet its financial responsibilities regarding the new Capitol. Hartford subsequently purchased Trinity College (which established its new campus on Hartford's Gallows Hill) and donated the site for the Capitol. The resolution of the Hartford-New Haven competition was not, however, the end of controversy.

Even more acrimony developed during the construction of the new Capitol. The two architects who dominated the considerations of the Board of Commissioners charged by the General Assembly to oversee the construction of the Capitol were James G. Batterson and Richard M. Upjohn.

James G. Batterson (1823-1901) operated a cemetery monument yard and marble and granite importing business in Hartford. Although his monument business prospered greatly with the barrage of monument orders during and after the Civil War, Batterson desperately sought to become a leading builder. He hired George Keller (1842-1935), a man who would eventually be known as Hartford's leading nineteenth-century architect, and submitted a Batterson-Keller plan for the new Capitol. Richard M. Upjohn (1827-1903) was a respected New York City architect who had a reputation in Hartford as a result of his designs used for the Park Church (1867), the West Middle School (completed, 1873), and a High Victorian Gothic home on Forest Street built for Charles Boardman Smith (1870). Upjohn's plans for the Capitol were chosen by the Rosin of Commissioners in April 1872, apparently putting an end to the Batterson (Keller)-Upjohn competition. Such, however, was not to be the case.

Drawing upon apparently strong political support in the General Assembly, Batterson succeeded in having himself appointed contractor by the Board of Commissioners to build Upjohn's building, but Batterson, of course, had no intention of simply building Upjohn's building. Indeed, during the construction phase of the Capitol from 1872 to 1879, Batterson did everything he could to have Upjohn dropped as architect, to have a new Batterson design substituted, and, having failed in these attempts, to alter significantly the Upjohn design and to construct the building with little consultation with the Board of Commissioners' appointed construction superintendent. The tale of Batterson's intrigues is far too complex for brief summation, but Batterson did succeed in altering the Upjohn design significantly, and, in the course of that effort, to have effected a cost increase of the project from under $1,000,000 to over $2,500,000. It should also be noted that it has been said that the Batterson "modifications" improved upon the Upjohn design—by, for example, including the now-famous dome.

In any case, one conclusion to be reached is that an account of the location and construction of the new State Capitol for "the Land of Steady Habits" includes little "steadiness."

For Further Reading

Curry, David Park and Pierce, Patricia Dawes, eds. Monument: The Connecticut State Capitol. Hartford, 1979.

Ransom, David F. "James 0. Batterson and the New State House." The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, 45 (January 1980), 1-15.

* Entry under revision.