❮ ❯

The Georgia State Capitol is an architecturally and historically significant building in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It has been named a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the primary office building of Georgia’s government housing the offices of the governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state on the second floor, and on the third floor, chambers in which the General Assembly, that consists of the Georgia State Senate and Georgia House of Representatives which meets annually from January to April. The fourth floor houses visitors’ galleries overlooking the legislative chambers and a museum. A statue of Miss Freedom caps the dome.

The capitol site was occupied previously by the first Atlanta City Hall. To encourage the state government to relocate the capital city to rapidly growing and industrialized Atlanta from rural Milledgeville, the city donated the site. The first capitol in Louisville no longer stands, while in Augusta and Savannah the legislature met in makeshift facilities, perhaps causing (or caused by) the alternation of those two cities as capital. The legislature also met at other places, including Macon, especially during and just after the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War.

The Georgia State Capitol is one of only forty-three National Historic Landmarks in Georgia. Built on the former site of Atlanta City Hall/Fulton County Courthouse (1854-1884), the five-acre property was donated to the state by the City of Atlanta specifically for a new capitol building. As the seat of state government since 1889, the capitol has been the focus of Georgia policy and law-making during the state’s greatest periods of growth, and the scene of countless colorful events in the state’s history.

Designed by Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin P. Burnham in a style described as “Neo- Classical-Renaissance Revival,” the classical lines and massive scale of the building appropriately reflect the seriousness of the work that goes on within. Built on one of the higher points of the city, the gold domed capitol is a visual landmark in the southern part of the downtown business district, and is the focal point of the state government complex.

Little altered on the exterior since its completion, the Georgia State Capitol is of very high significance architecturally, historically, politically and socially, as the symbolic anchor of Georgia politics since Reconstruction.