Texas State Capitol

Completed in 1888 after a six-year construction project, the Texas State Capitol was built from Sunset Red granite quarried near Marble Falls and was funded through an exchange of public land rather than cash — the state traded three million acres of Panhandle rangeland to a Chicago syndicate in exchange for the building’s construction. The result was the largest state capitol building in the country by total area, and its dome rises to 302 feet, surpassing the dome of the U.S. Capitol by seven feet — a distinction Texans have never tired of noting.

The building houses the Texas Senate, the Texas House of Representatives, the offices of the governor and lieutenant governor, and the Supreme Court of Texas. The rotunda’s interior features a series of portraits of every Republic of Texas president and Texas state governor arranged around a mosaic terrazzo floor inlaid with the seals of the six nations that have governed Texas. The Capitol was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and underwent a comprehensive restoration in the 1990s.