North Dakota State Capitol - History

History

The original North Dakota State Capitol building, built between 1883 and 1884, received several additions during the early 1900s until it burned to the ground on the night of December 28, 1930. The fire was said to have been started by oily rags in a janitor's closet on the top floor of the building. The rags had been used to clean and varnish the legislator's desks in anticipation of the next legislative session. North Dakota Secretary of State Robert Byrne was able to save the original copy of the state's constitution, but he suffered cuts and burns on his hands while breaking a window to reach the document. Another state employee, Jennie Ulsrud, burned her hands when she attempted to save records in the North Dakota State Treasurer's office. Governor George F. Shafer came back from his visit to St. Paul, Minnesota while the fire was still burning. Upon arrival, he immediately assembled a team of state legislators and officials to discuss plans for coping with the loss of records and work space. The day after the fire, in an effort to save as many records as possible, 40 state prison inmates went to work trying to salvage materials from the ruins. The Legislature met temporarily in Bismarck's War Memorial Building and the City Auditorium.

The disaster required the construction of a new building during the Great Depression. The tower and wing were built between 1931 and 1934, at a cost of US$2 million. Ground was broken for the building by Governor George F. Shafer on August 13, 1932. Workers on the building were paid only 30 cents an hour and, after multiple worker strikes, the capitol grounds were administered by martial law in June 1933. The state sold half of the original capitol campus to defray the cost of construction.

While the new 19-story Capitol building was expected to have plenty of space for years to come, the space quickly filled as the Government of the state expanded. The Liberty Memorial Building, which was completed in 1924, was able to contain some of the additional workers, but more space was needed by 1955 when construction was begun for the State Office Building. The building originally housed the Bismarck Junior College, but the Legislature purchased it in 1959. The 1960s was a period of rapid development of the grounds. In 1960, the new North Dakota Governor's Residence was built on the grounds to replace the old residence which was beginning to deteriorate. In 1963, the North Dakota Heritage Center was built to accommodate the expanding North Dakota State Historical Society, and in 1968, the North Dakota Department of Transportation building was constructed to provide more office space for that agency. It is the last new building built as of 2007, although a Judicial Wing was added on to the base of the Capitol tower in 1977. While the space needed by state government has increased since the original construction of the Capitol in the 1930s, the state's population has actually decreased since that time.