Saint Paul, the capital of Minnesota

A temporary capital that stayed

When Congress created the Minnesota Territory in 1849, the Organic Act named Saint Paul, then a small river town, as the temporary seat of government until a permanent capital was chosen. Governor Alexander Ramsey organized the territorial government there, and the first legislature met there that September. In its second session the territorial legislature debated choosing St. Anthony, the settlement at the falls that later became part of Minneapolis, but chose Saint Paul, and on February 7, 1851, it passed an act to erect public buildings there.

The missing bill

Saint Paul nearly lost the capital in 1857. The territorial legislature passed a bill to move the seat of government to St. Peter, a town on the Minnesota River to the southwest. Before it could become law, the bill had to pass through the enrolled bills committee, chaired by Joseph Rolette, a fur trader and legislator from Pembina. Rolette disappeared with the bill. While his colleagues waited in a session that dragged on for 123 hours, he hid until the session ran out. A territorial judge, Rensselaer Nelson, later ruled that the legislature had no power to move the capital anyway, and Saint Paul kept it.

Three capitols

Minnesota’s first capitol was completed in 1853 and burned in 1881. A second was built quickly in 1883 but was soon too small. In 1895 the state held a design competition for a third, and among more than 40 entries the winner was Cass Gilbert, a 35-year-old architect from Saint Paul. Ground was broken in 1896, and the building opened on January 2, 1905, at a cost of about $4.5 million. Gilbert went on to a national career, designing the Woolworth Building in New York and the US Supreme Court building.

The Capitol

Gilbert’s Capitol is crowned by a self-supporting dome of white Georgia marble, modeled on St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which rises about 220 feet to the top of its lantern. At the base of the dome stands a gilded copper sculpture of a four-horse chariot, The Progress of the State, by Daniel Chester French and Edward C. Potter, installed in 1906. In the marble floor of the rotunda is an eight-pointed star, the same North Star that now appears on the state flag.

From 2013 to 2017 the building underwent a $310 million restoration, repairing its stone and systems and returning its public spaces to Gilbert’s original look.

Saint Paul and Minneapolis

Saint Paul had about 307,000 residents in 2025, the second largest city in Minnesota. Minneapolis, across the Mississippi, is the largest, with about 430,000. Together the Twin Cities anchor a metropolitan area of more than three million people.

Visiting

The Minnesota Historical Society offers tours of the Capitol. See its Capitol visitor page.