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 The
classic simplicity and well-proportioned design of Utah's
State Capitol Building, located in Salt Lake City, Utah,
have allowed it to remain as pleasing an architectural
symbol of American democracy today as it was when the
plans and architect were selected in 1912 in the most
important architectural competition ever held in the State.
Richard Karl August Kletting's winning design, along with
the nine other entries, falls into the broad category
of Beaux Arts-influenced architecture. Kletting was a
grand old man in Utah architecture by the time he undertook
his design for the competition. He was 52 years old, and
this was his last major commission. Kletting's academic
and practical training in his native Europe, coupled with
his long and varied professional experience in this country,
were complemented by his varied interests in city planning
and community affairs.
The pioneers of Utah were anxious to build a statehouse.
The first legislative assembly of the territory, which
met in 1851, placed the capitol in the center of the territory
and appointed a committee to proceed to Millard County
immediately to designate the exact location for the new
capitol building designed by Truman O. Angell, the primary
designer of the Salt Lake Mormon Temple. However, central
Utah did not develop as hoped, and only one complete session
of the Legislature was held at Filmore before the governmental
offices were moved back north to Salt Lake City. The $20,000
appropriated for the building in Filmore was considered
wasted by Washington, and Congress refused to grant further
funds for government buildings in Utah.
The state was divided by a Mormon-Gentile conflict from
about 1858 to 1896, when statehood finally was granted
to Utah. In 1896 those scars of forty-nine years of conflict
were not sufficiently healed for the idea of an architectural
symbol of statehood to be addressed. An economic depression
in the 1890s caused further delay. It would be ten years
until the diverse groups were able to work together to
plan a statehouse.
In January 1907 Governor John C. Cutler reminded the legislature
that Utah had been in the union for eleven years without
a capitol building. In the 1909 session three acts were
passed relating to the financing of the building, and
the project finally moved ahead with help from a windfall.
A.R. Barnes, attorney general for the state, found a state
inheritance tax lying inoperative on the books. His enforcement
of this law in the estate of E.H. Harriman, railroad magnate,
resulted in $798,546.00 revenue. Along with these funds,
the legislature passed a bill to provide for and negotiate
a loan of $1,000,000.00 and to issue bonds. The Harriman
funds provided sufficient money to start the work.
Despite the excellence of the prize-winning building which
resulted, the Utah Capitol competition must be considered
controversial at best. Its program broke twelve of the
fourteen newly announced guidelines of the American Institute
of Architects, and thus became a national problem within
the profession, with architects, both local and national,
urging one another not to compete. Finally, Utah architects
did enter the Competition, reversing their group statement
that they could not and would not compete under the existing
program. Several nationally-known architects also competed,
at the risk of disciplinary action by their professional
organization.
The architectural symbolism of American democracy had
been developing over the previous decades, as statehouses
were built. By 1911 the architectural symbols were familiar
-- the dome, the balanced wings for the divisions of government,
and the decorative classical elements indicate the roots
of that democracy in Greece and Rome. In Utah, the architect
was called upon to design a building of this magnitude
for $2,000,000.00. Minnesota's statehouse, by contrast,
had been completed only a few years earlier for approximately
$4,500,000.00.
The exterior of Kletting's capitol design is similar to
the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D. C. The Utah building
perhaps achieves some of its grandeur from the condensation
of the same elements -- the porticos, pediments, and monumental
columns-onto the simple, but carefully proportioned, rectangle.
The building is 404 feet long, 240 feet wide, and 285
feet to the top of the dome. The Utah Capitol rests on
a raised, rusticated basement with monumental flights
of steps leading to doors recessed behind the Corinthian
columned porticos. Kletting's was the only plan that proposed
monumental free-standing columns on three sides of the
building. The columns, along with the rest of the exterior,
are constructed of Utah granite taken from Little Cottonwood
Canyon in Salt Lake County. The dome has been called Walterized
Wren, and indeed it bears a strong similarity to the dome
of the U. S. Capitol by Thomas U. Walter.
Henry Russell Hitchcock and William Seale in Temples
of Democracy appraise Kletting's building: His plan
was the simplest and most dramatic. Wide but not deep,
its dome and its continuous range of colossal Corinthian
columns echoed the national capitol. There was so little
incidental decoration that the general effect was more
strictly Classical than Renaissance....The Kentucky Capitol
lacks the belated Gilded Age glitter of those of Idaho
and Montana; all the same, it is not so grand as Kletting's
far more restrained capitol at Salt Lake City. Surveying
the Great Salt Lake and ranges of mountains that fade
to pink and violet in the setting sun, the Utah Capitol
combines McKim, Mead and White's simplicity with Gilbert's
taste for the spectacular."
The plan of the first Utah Capitol selected by Brigham
Young and built in Fillmore was as different from other
American statehouses being built during that period as
Kletting's winning entry was similar to the then accepted
concept of a state capitol building. In 1911-1912 the
Utah State Capitol Commission representing both the Mormon
and non-Mormon factions demonstrated Utah's wishes to
be an acceptable and cooperating part of the nation.
Geraldine H. Clayton
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