Massachusetts State House, Boston
This is a drawing of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. I have arrived here and thought I would post my drawing of the State House. Built in 1798, the “new” State House is located across from the Boston Common on the top of Beacon Hill. The land was once owned by Massachusetts first elected governor, John Hancock. Charles Bullfinch, the leading architect of the day, designed the building. The self-taught architect Charles Bulfinch, who also built state houses for Connecticut (1796) and Maine (1832) based his design for the state house on the Somerset House in London.
The building’s front features an elevated portico with a series of Corinthian columns. The red brick facade was painted white in 1825 and remained painted until 1928 when the bricks were exposed again. The bricks’ red color contrasts nicely with the white columns. The dome, originally made out of wood shingles, is now sheathed in copper and covered by 23 karat gold which was added to prevent leaks into the State House. In the House of Representatives chambers hangs a wooden codfish which is called the Sacred Cod. The Sacred Cod signifies the importance of the fishing industry to the Commonwealth. At the top of the golden dome sits a wooden pine cone which symbolizes logging in Boston during the 18th century.
Abstract Architecture of the day:
This work by Vernelle Noel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
The Thinking Insomniac 
