The Virginia State Capitol is the seat of the state government of the Commonwealth of Virginia, located in Richmond, the third capital of the U.S. state of Virginia. (The first two were Jamestown and Williamsburg.) It houses North America’s oldest elected legislative body, the Virginia General Assembly, first established as the House of Burgesses in 1619.
The Capitol was conceived by Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau in France, based on the Maison Carrée in Nîmes. Construction began in 1785 and was completed in 1788. The current Capitol is the eighth built to serve as Virginia’s statehouse, primarily due to fires during the colonial period. In the early 20th century, two wings were added, making it appear. In 1960, it was designated a National Historic Landmark. Bed Bug Exterminator Richmond
History
During the American Colonial period, Virginia’s first capital was Jamestown, where the first legislative body, the Virginia House of Burgesses, met in 1619. The new government used four state houses at different times at Jamestown due to fires. The first Representative Legislative Assembly convened on July 30, 1619, at the Jamestown Church, which served as the first Capitol.
With the decision to relocate the government inland to Williamsburg in 1699, a grand new Capitol building was completed in November 1705. Nearby was the elegant Governor’s Palace. It burned in 1747 and was replaced in 1753. On June 29, 1776, Virginians declared their independence from Great Britain. They wrote the state’s first constitution, creating an independent government four days before Congress voted for the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4.
The Capitol at Williamsburg served until the American Revolutionary War began when Governor Thomas Jefferson urged the capital to be relocated to Richmond, Virginia. The building was last used as a capitol on December 24, 1779, when the Virginia General Assembly adjourned to reconvene in 1780 at the new capital, Richmond. It was eventually destroyed.
American Civil War
The building also served as the Capitol of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861–65) (It was the Confederacy’s second home, the first being the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama).
The Capitol, the adjacent Virginia Governor’s Mansion, and the White House of the Confederacy (about three blocks to the north on East Clay Street) were spared when departing Confederate troops were ordered to burn the city’s warehouses and factories, and fires spread out of control in April 1865. John Brown’s carpet bag, full of documents including many unpublished ones, was kept in the Virginia Capitol from 1860 to 1865 by Andrew Hunter, at that time a state senator. When Richmond fell, “so Yankees can’t find them,” the carpet bag was hidden “between the wall and the plastering.” It has never been found.
Address: 1000 Bank St, Richmond, VA
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