Georgia State Capitol: Gold Leaf from a Gold Rush
The gold on the Georgia State Capitol dome did not come from a catalog. It came from the hills near Dahlonega in Lumpkin County, where in the 1830s prospectors sparked America's first gold rush - two decades before anyone found a nugget at Sutter's Mill. In 1958, workers climbed the dome and applied native gold leaf over a surface that had originally been terra cotta covered in tin. Since then, Georgia's legislators have conducted business 'under the Gold Dome,' a phrase so embedded in the state's political vocabulary that reporters use it without explanation. The building beneath that dome has served as the seat of Georgia's government since 1889, its Neoclassical columns and Corinthian portico deliberately echoing the United States Capitol in Washington. But the gold on top is distinctly Georgian - mineral wealth pulled from the state's own mountains and hammered thin enough to catch the Atlanta sun.
A Capital That Kept Moving
Georgia's capital city has been restless. The first capitol in Louisville no longer stands. In Augusta and Savannah, legislators met in makeshift facilities, the seat of government ping-ponging between the two cities. During the Civil War, when Sherman's Atlanta Campaign resulted in the capture and burning of the city, the legislature scattered to Macon and wherever else would have them. After the war, rapidly industrializing Atlanta made its bid: the city donated its own five-acre City Hall and County Courthouse site to lure the state government from rural Milledgeville, which had served as capital since 1807. The 1877 Constitutional Convention voted to make the move permanent. Atlanta's offer was accepted in 1879, the land conveyed in 1880. The new capitol would be built on ground that had already housed the city's own government - a layering of civic authority on civic authority.
Columns, Marble, and Electric Light
The commission that oversaw construction included former Confederate general Philip Cook, and it hired architects Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin Pierce Burnham of Chicago to design the building, with Miles and Horne of Toledo, Ohio handling construction. The result, completed in March 1889, was a Neoclassical statement: a four-story portico supported by six Corinthian columns on massive stone piers, Georgia's coat of arms carved into the pediment above. Inside, the building was cutting-edge for its era - among the earliest structures to feature elevators, centralized steam heat, and combination gas and electric lighting. Classical pilasters and oak paneling line the corridors. The floors are marble quarried from Pickens County, which still produces marble today. The central rotunda opens upward through the building, flanked by two wings with grand staircases and three-story atriums crowned by clerestory windows. Sculptor George Crouch executed all the ornamental work - every carved detail in the building bears his hand.
Monuments That Argue with Each Other
Walk the Capitol grounds and you encounter a sculpture garden of competing narratives. An equestrian statue of John Brown Gordon, the Confederate general turned governor, has stood since 1907. Nearby, a statue of Jimmy Carter, the Georgia peanut farmer who became president, was erected in 1992. In 2017, a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. joined them. Perhaps the most striking piece is 'Expelled Because of Color,' a bronze commissioned in 1976 by the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus and unveiled in 1978. It commemorates the Original 33 - the 33 African-American legislators who were expelled from the Georgia legislature in 1868, just three years after the Civil War ended. A drinking fountain with a bas-relief of Mary Latimer McLendon, a temperance and women's suffrage activist, has stood since 1923. In 2013, Governor Nathan Deal ordered the statue of Thomas E. Watson - a populist turned white supremacist - moved from the Capitol steps to a less prominent location across the street. The grounds are a battlefield of memory, each monument placed by a generation making its own claim about what Georgia means.
Hollywood Under the Dome
The Capitol has become one of Atlanta's most recognizable filming locations. The premiere episode of the ninth season of 'The Walking Dead' was filmed around and within the building over two days, its Neoclassical grandeur standing in for a post-apocalyptic seat of power. 'The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,' 'Selma,' 'Ride Along 2,' and 'Kill the Messenger' have all used the Capitol as a backdrop. The original $5,000 filming license fee was raised to $25,000 in 2014, a measure of both the building's popularity with production companies and the state's recognition of what its architecture is worth on screen. In 1997, the House and Senate chambers were restored to their original 1889 appearance, with replicated decoration and period color schemes - a renovation that made the building even more appealing to filmmakers seeking period authenticity.
From the Air
Located at 33.749°N, 84.388°W in the heart of downtown Atlanta, on Washington Street. The gold dome is the defining visual landmark - it catches sunlight and is visible from considerable distance on clear days. The Capitol sits in a cluster of government buildings south of the main downtown skyscraper group. Liberty Plaza extends to the east. From altitude, look for the dome's glint amid the lower-rise government district. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (KATL) is approximately 8 miles to the south. DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (KPDK) is about 12 miles to the northeast. Best viewed at 2,000-4,000 feet AGL on a sunny day when the gold leaf is most visible against the surrounding gray and red rooftops.