The North Dakota State Capitol is the house of government of the U.S. state of North Dakota. The capitol, a 21-story Art Deco tower, is located in Bismarck at 600 East Boulevard Avenue, and is the tallest habitable building in the state. On a campus that also houses many other government buildings, the capitol building and the surrounding office buildings house the state's legislative and judicial branches, as well as many government agencies.
The State Capitol is largely surrounded by state government buildings. The parks, walking trails, and monuments on the grounds provide a great deal of information about the state's history, making it one of the city's tourist attractions. Six buildings occupy the grounds; constructed as the government grew. Not all state agencies are housed on the grounds, however: a large number are spread throughout the city in other facilities. The state facility management division developed plans for a massive expansion and improvement of the grounds in 2000, but very little of the plan had been implemented by 2012.
History
The first capitol building was constructed between 1883 and 1884 to house the territorial government, and after statehood, two additions were erected: the Senate wing (1894, south side), and the House wing (ca. 1903, north side). On the morning of December 28, 1930, smoke was spotted coming from the northeast part of the original building, and despite the fire department being summoned within minutes of the fire being noticed, it was already too late to save the structure. Even as the fire raged through the upper portions of the building, efforts were made by citizens and state employees to rescue what was possible before everyone was ordered out of the building mid-morning. It was later determined to likely have originated in a pile of oily rags in a janitor's closet on the top floor of the main part of the building, as work had been underway to clean and varnish the legislators' desks in preparation for the upcoming legislative session. North Dakota Secretary of State Robert Byrne saved the original copy of the state's constitution, but suffered cuts and burns on his hands while breaking a window to reach the document. Another state employee, Jennie Ulsrud, burned her hands when she attempted to save records in the state treasurer's office. Governor George F. Shafer came back from his visit to St. Paul, Minnesota while the fire was still burning. Upon arrival, he immediately assembled a team of state legislators and officials to discuss plans for coping with the loss of records and work space. As soon as it was safe to enter the interior of the still smoldering building, 40 state prison inmates were used to salvage the various departments' vaults and other items from the ruins (some vaults were burned, but most were found to be intact when opened). The Legislature met temporarily in Bismarck's War Memorial Building and the City Auditorium, an annex being constructed to link the two. State offices were spread out across all available space across town, including an entire floor of the Patterson Hotel downtown. Such was the need for space that the unburned lower floors of the original capitol's 1903 wing were even repaired and returned to use.
The disaster required the construction of a new building during the Great Depression. The tower and wing were built between 1931 and 1934, at a cost of $2 million. Governor George F. Shafer broke ground for the building on August 13, 1932. Workers on the building were paid only 30 cents an hour and, after multiple worker strikes, the capitol grounds were administered by martial law in June 1933. The state sold half of the original capitol campus to defray the cost of construction. Artist Edgar Miller was brought in to do much of the interior design and decoration as well as the bas-relief sculptures on the facade which depict the human history of North Dakota.