Georgia State Capitol

This guide to the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta follows an 1883 law requiring every stone in the new statehouse to come from inside Georgia, and the board of commissioners who quietly looked elsewhere anyway. It traces the four and a half years of construction that followed, from 1884 to 1889, built by roughly two hundred fifty laborers and masons whose names went largely unrecorded, plus a crew that salvaged half a million bricks from Atlanta's old city hall. You'll hear about the Toledo firm that won the contract and the deadline it kept. Look up at the carved columns as you listen for the one craftsman whose name did survive the record.