File:South Carolina State House, Gervais Street, Columbia, SC - 53391203644.jpg

English: Built in 1851-1907, this Classical Revival-style building was designed by P. H. Hammarskold, John Niernsee, Frank McHenry Niernsee, Frank Pierce Milburn, and Charles Coker Wilson to serve as the state capitol building for South Carolina. The building’s construction was fraught with delays and interference, as well as economic problems, which led to its construction being drawn out over 56 years. The building’s construction began in 1851 under the direction of P. H. Hammarskold, but poor quality workmanship and fraud led to the architect being dismissed, the first of many setbacks in the construction of the building. In 1855, a new architect, John Niernsee, was hired to oversee the project, but the building was only partially complete when South Carolina was the first state to secede from the United States during the Civil War in 1861, leading to a slowing and eventual halt to construction. In 1865, the building was damaged by artillery shells and burned, along with most of Columbia, with this being carried out by soldiers under the command of General W. T. Sherman, in order to break the morale and resolve of the Confederates. The building’s construction resumed after the Civil War, but was slowed by the lack of resources and the diminished tax base during reconstruction in the late 1860s and 1870s, with South Carolina suffering from the after-effects of being devastated by the Civil War. The building’s exterior walls and roof were completed in 1875. Between 1888 and 1891, the building’s interior was finally completed under the direction of Frank McHenry Niernsee, son of the building’s previous architect, John Niernsee. In 1900, work finally began on completing the exterior under the direction of Frank Pierce Milburn, however, Milburn was replaced by Charles Coker Wilson in 1905, who oversaw the project to its completion in 1907. The building is a brick structure faced in granite and marble, with two-over-two double-hung windows with decorative trim surrounds, pediments above the second story windows, a rusticated base, quoins, a central cupola with a dome, ionic pilasters, oxeye windows dormers, and a lantern below a flagpole, two-story raised front and rear porticoes with fluted corinthian columns, cornices with modillions and dentils, a parapet with a stone balustrade, decorative lampposts flanking the staircases, decorative carved reliefs, and engaged columns and pilasters. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. The building today remains in use as the home of the South Carolina House of Representatives and Senate, and underwent a major rehabilitation in 1998.