Old State House
Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Old State House. Kentucky's third capitol on this site was built in 1827-1829 of Kentucky River marble. The two previous capitols were destroyed by fire. Gideon Shryock of Lexington, one of the state's most distinguished architects, designed the building which introduced Greek Revival style to Kentucky. Its most outstanding feature is the self-supporting, stone circular stairway. Joel Scott, keeper of penitentiary, invented a wire saw to cut the rough stone to expedite construction. This building, Shryock's masterpiece, served as seat of government for eighty years until completion of New Capitol in 1909. Daniel Boone and wife Rebecca lay in state here in 1845 before their reinterment in Frankfort. Only state capitol in U.S. captured by Confederate forces, September 1862. Gov. William Goebel assassinated here, January 30, 1900. Home of the Kentucky Historical Society since 1920; restored, 1973-75. Extensive museum-open to public.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
Kentucky's third capitol, built of Kentucky River marble in 1827-1829 after fire claimed its two predecessors, introduced the Greek Revival style to the state through architect Gideon Shryock, whose self-supporting circular stone stairway remains its marvel. To speed construction, penitentiary keeper Joel Scott invented a wire saw to cut the rough stone. It served as the seat of government for eighty years and witnessed history's turns — Daniel and Rebecca Boone lay in state here in 1845, Confederate forces captured it in 1862, and Gov. William Goebel was assassinated on its grounds in 1900.
Why it matters
The only U.S. state capitol ever captured by Confederate forces, this building stood at the center of Kentucky's fraught place as a divided border state and remains a landmark of early American architecture.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When work began on this building in 1827, Kentucky was barely a generation past the frontier. It had entered the Union in 1792 as the first state west of the Appalachians, and Frankfort — a small town chosen as capital partly for its central location on the Kentucky River — was still finding its footing as a seat of government. Twice already the young commonwealth had watched its statehouse burn, and each fire meant starting over.
This was also the moment when a new nation was reaching for a new architecture. The Greek Revival style, with its columns and clean classical lines, was sweeping the country because it seemed to speak the language of democracy itself — the young republic looking back to ancient Athens for a visual vocabulary. That this style arrived in Kentucky through this very building says something about the ambitions of a state eager to prove it belonged among its older eastern neighbors.
The river that gave the town its highway also gave the building its bones: the marble was quarried from Kentucky's own ground. A capitol built of local stone, in the newest national style, was a statement — that this place west of the mountains intended to endure.
People & events
The building's genius belongs first to Gideon Shryock, a Lexington architect still early in his career when he designed it. His masterstroke was a self-supporting stone stairway that curves upward in a spiral with no visible central support — the kind of thing that stops visitors in their tracks even now and makes them wonder how it holds itself up. It is the heart of the building and, by the marker's own reckoning, Shryock's finest work.
There is a quieter hero here too: Joel Scott, the keeper of the state penitentiary, who invented a wire saw to cut the rough marble more quickly. It is an easy detail to skim past, but it's a reminder that great buildings are made by problem-solvers as much as by designers.
Then history came calling, again and again. In 1845 the bodies of Daniel and Rebecca Boone lay in state here before being reinterred in Frankfort — the frontier legend honored beneath a classical dome. In September 1862, Confederate forces captured the town, making this the only state capitol ever seized by the Confederacy. And on a January morning in 1900, Governor William Goebel was shot near this building in one of the most notorious episodes in American political history, dying days later amid a bitterly disputed election.
Its place in the American story
Few buildings carry as many threads of the American story under one roof. As the place that introduced Greek Revival architecture to Kentucky, it belongs to the larger moment when the whole country was translating the ideals of the republic into stone and column — a young democracy consciously dressing itself in the robes of the ancient world.
It also embodies Kentucky's wrenching position during the Civil War. As a border state torn between North and South, Kentucky lived the national conflict as an internal one, and no fact captures that more sharply than its statehouse being the single capitol the Confederacy ever captured. To stand here is to feel how close and how divided the war truly was.
And in the Goebel assassination, the building witnessed a crisis that reached far beyond state lines — a violent, contested transfer of power that the whole nation watched with unease. For eighty years this was where Kentucky governed itself, and the events that unfolded here were never only local.
If you visit
Come for the stairway. Step inside and look up: the stone spiral seems to float, curving toward the ceiling with nothing obvious holding it aloft. Take a moment to simply stand under it — it's the kind of engineering marvel that rewards a slow, craned-neck look rather than a quick glance.
Run your eye over the building's classical proportions and remember that this was the style's first appearance in the state. The stone itself came from the Kentucky River country around you, so the building is quite literally made of its own landscape.
The site has served as the home of the Kentucky Historical Society since 1920 and was carefully restored in the 1970s, so it welcomes the public as a museum. If you're mapping a route through Kentucky's capital, this makes a natural anchor — a single building where architecture, the frontier, the Civil War, and a turn-of-the-century political tragedy all overlap. Give yourself time to let those layers settle; the walls hold more history than any single visit can absorb.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Gideon Shryock
- · Joel Scott
- · Daniel Boone
- · Rebecca Boone
- · William Goebel
Related events
- · Assassination of Gov. William Goebel
- · Confederate capture of Frankfort
Themes & tags
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