Montana State Capitol, Helena

The Montana State Capitol was really cool to see and the drive to get there was delightful. The journey is just as important as the destination, and this is no exception. Even so, the Capitol itself is a wonder to behold.

The Montana State Capitol is the state capitol of the U.S. state of Montana that houses the Montana State Legislature which is located in the state capital of Helena at 1301 East Sixth Avenue. The building was constructed between 1896 and 1902 with wing-annexes added between 1909 and 1912. A design competition for the building was conducted in 1896. The commission selected a design by George R. Mann as the winner. In 1897, after it was found that the Commission was planning to scam money from the building project, it was disbanded and a second Capitol Commission was convened. The new Commission abandoned Mann's plan as being too costly, and had a second design competition, won by Charles Emlen Bell and John Hackett Kent, of Bell & Kent of Council Bluffs, Iowa. In order to have their design built, Bell & Kent relocated their office to Helena. While Mann's building was never built in Montana, it was selected later as the basic design for the Arkansas State Capitol. The winning design by Bell & Kent had been altered already during the construction phase, when in 1901 the commission asked for the structure to be made more imposing by increasing the height of the dome. Kent opposed the changes, as his original low spherical dome was meant to be "pure Greek", but Bell advocated the commission's request. Between 1909 and 1912, the building was extended by the addition of two new wings on the eastern and western sides. This work was executed by Link & Haire, architects of Butte, with F. M. Andrews & Company of New York as consulting architects.