Massachusetts State House

Architecture Critic Robert Campbell

Robert Campbell: Buildings always tell you an awful lot about the people who built them. And one thing they tell you very often is we're rich. And so a particular style becomes a way of saying, "We have a little more money than we used to and we can indulge ourselves."

An example of that kind of change is when the Georgian architecture of the 18th Century turns into the federal architecture of the turn of the 19th Century. Suddenly the columns become longer and thinner, and the fanlights over the doors, instead of having round arches, have segmented arches that are flatter and thinner.

And so people were saying, "We're much more delicate than we used to be. We're not these rough and tumble guys that came over from England." You see that all through history. If you really want to make an extreme statement, you can say that architecture is all about asserting status. And the style that you choose has a great deal to do with the kind of status that you're choosing to give yourself.

Somerset House, London, 1786
Photograph by Peter Vanderwarker

Robert Campbell: A comparison people often make is between the Boston State House by [Charles] Bulfinch, and Somerset House by William Chambers on the Thames in London. They're very similar in that they have a central bay and flanking bays, a kind of traditional layout. But you see right away a difference, a lightness and a grace in Bulfinch's work that comes maybe from thinking on paper and from working in brick - a delicate material that you can pick up with your hand. Somerset House is a big, heavy stone, "look at me" kind of building. You didn't find that in America in that period.

Massachusetts State House, 1797
Photograph by Peter Vanderwarker

Robert Campbell: I do think [the State House is] appropriate for democracy in that it looks permeable, it looks open. There's a big porch across the front on the second level. There are open arches on the lower level. It doesn't look as if it ought to have Swiss Guards in front of it. It looks approachable in that sense.