Massachusetts State House & The Golden Dome

Why is it significant?

Stand right here at the top of Beacon Street, resting your eyes on the towering granite stairs leading up to the Massachusetts State House. Look directly up at the gleaming golden dome reflecting the morning sky.

Key Facts

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Stand right here at the top of Beacon Street, resting your eyes on the towering granite stairs leading up to the Massachusetts State House. Look directly up at the gleaming golden dome reflecting the morning sky. When master architect Charles Bulfinch completed this red-brick neoclassic masterpiece in seventeen ninety-eight, the land beneath your shoes was actually John Hancock's private pasture where cows grazed quietly above Boston Common. That brilliant dome wasn't always gold. Bulfinch originally covered it with simple wooden shingles that leaked constantly in bitter New England storms. In eighteen zero two, legendary patriot and silversmith Paul Revere came to the rescue with his pioneering copper foundry, sheathing the entire curved surface in durable rolled copper plates. It was only during the Gilded Age in eighteen seventy-four that artisans applied twenty-three-karat gold leaf. During the dark days of World War Two, officials feared German U-boats prowling Massachusetts Bay would use the shining dome to guide aerial bombing raids into Boston Harbor. State workers scaled the roof with buckets of dark paint and blackened every square inch of gold, keeping the Capitol invisible until victory was declared. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously crowned this exact building the Hub of the Solar System. Turn left along Beacon Street as we step into the neighborhood that shaped the moral soul of a nation.