Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri

Choosing the middle

As statehood approached, Missouri’s leaders decided the capital should be in the center of the state. They chose an undeveloped tract overlooking the Missouri River, and Governor Alexander McNair signed the bill naming the site of the City of Jefferson as the seat of government on December 31, 1821.

Before then, the government had worked out of St. Louis, the territorial seat. The 1820 constitutional convention met at the Mansion House Hotel there, and the first General Assembly convened at the Missouri Hotel on September 18, 1820, almost a year before Missouri formally became a state.

The St. Charles years

A new capital took time to build, so the Legislature moved to St. Charles, whose residents offered meeting rooms for free. Lawmakers first met there on June 4, 1821, on the second floor of a row of adjoining brick buildings. Those rooms are now the First Missouri State Capitol State Historic Site. On October 1, 1826, the government moved to Jefferson City for good.

Fire and a new Capitol

The capitol that stands today is the third in Jefferson City. Its predecessor, finished in 1840, burned after lightning struck the dome on February 5, 1911. A special train rushed Sedalia’s fire engine 65 miles to Jefferson City in 74 minutes, but the building was lost. That August, voters approved a $3.5 million bond issue for a replacement.

The New York firm of Tracy and Swartwout, Evarts Tracy and Egerton Swartwout, designed the new Capitol in the Roman Renaissance style, faced with limestone marble from Carthage, Missouri. It was built from 1913 to 1917 and formally dedicated on October 6, 1924. A bronze statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain, a nod to the state’s farms, stands on the dome about 260 feet above the ground.

Benton’s mural

The Capitol’s most famous room is the House Lounge. In 1935 the House commissioned the painter Thomas Hart Benton to fill it with a mural, and he finished A Social History of the State of Missouri in 1936. Its frank scenes of everyday Missouri life stirred controversy, and there were attempts to paint over it. It survived, and it is now a highlight of Capitol tours.

The Civil War

Missouri’s capital did not move during the Civil War, but its government split. The pro-Confederate government of Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson went into exile, meeting at Neosho and Cassville and later in Marshall, Texas, while a Unionist provisional government governed Missouri from Jefferson City.

Visiting

Guided tours of the Capitol last about 45 minutes, and the Missouri State Museum fills the ground floor. Visitors can also see the restored first capitol rooms in St. Charles.