Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana

New Orleans and a law to leave it

When Louisiana became a state in 1812, its government sat in New Orleans, by far its largest city, and the first General Assembly met there on July 27, 1812. Apart from two brief sessions in Donaldsonville in 1830 and 1831, it stayed there for nearly four decades.

The 1845 constitution required the legislature to move the seat of government at least sixty miles away, after a few more years of sessions in the city. Baton Rouge, about 80 miles up the Mississippi, was chosen, and the legislature first met there in January 1850.

War and Reconstruction

The Civil War ended that first Baton Rouge period. In 1862 the Confederate state government fled, first to Opelousas, where it held a session in December 1862, and then to Shreveport, in the northwest corner of the state, where it met from May 1863 until the war’s end. At the end of 1862 a fire gutted the Baton Rouge capitol. Meanwhile Union forces held New Orleans, and from October 1864 a Union-recognized legislature met there. New Orleans remained the seat of government through Reconstruction.

The 1879 constitution fixed the seat of government at Baton Rouge again and provided for repairing the old statehouse. The first legislative session back in Baton Rouge opened on May 8, 1882.

The Old State Capitol

That repaired statehouse still stands. Begun in the 1840s, it is a Gothic Revival building that looks like a castle on the bluff above the Mississippi, with turrets and battlements. After the fire it was restored with a cast-iron spiral staircase and a stained-glass dome. It served as the capitol until 1932 and is now the Old State Capitol museum.

Huey Long’s skyscraper

By the late 1920s Governor Huey P. Long wanted a new capitol, and he got one fast. Construction began on December 16, 1930, and the building was finished in a little over a year. Its architects, the New Orleans firm of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth, modeled it on the Nebraska State Capitol, then under construction. It was dedicated on May 16, 1932, although Long, by then a US senator, was in Washington and did not attend.

The Capitol is an Art Deco tower 450 feet tall with 34 floors, the tallest state capitol in the country. It has no dome. An observation deck near the top looks out over the Mississippi.

The building is also where Long died. On September 8, 1935, he was shot in a corridor of the Capitol, and he died two days later. He is buried on the Capitol grounds, beneath a statue facing the building he built.

Baton Rouge today

Baton Rouge had about 223,000 residents in 2025, the second largest city in Louisiana after New Orleans, with about 362,000. It is home to Louisiana State University and is a major center of the petrochemical industry.

Visiting

The Louisiana House of Representatives offers a virtual tour of the Capitol and information about visiting.