The original Brick Capitol, left, housed the Iowa Legislature from 1858 to 1884. This photo was taken about two years later.  By Dave Elbert When Iowa lawmakers return on Monday for the 91st General Assembly, they’ll gather under the famous gold dome that has dominated the city’s skyline for m ore than a century. But the legislature’s first home in Des Moines looked very different. Des Moines’ original capitol was a notable step down from Iowa City’s beloved Old Capitol, now a centerpiece of the University of Iowa. If you count the church in Burlington that housed Iowa’s territorial government from 1838 to 1841 and the Iowa City statehouse that was used from 1841 to 1857, the first Des Moines capitol was the third official seat of the state government. Its construction started in 1856 and continued a little more than a year before the three-story Brick Capitol opened a site south of the current statehouse. After it opened, in 1857, the new capitol was described alternately as “an indifferent pile of bricks” or a product of “taste and elegance,” according to newspaper reports Philip G. Hockett quoted in a 2001 article in Iowa Heritage Illustrated. The “indifferent pile of bricks” description came from a newspaper in Iowa City, which, as Hocket noted, was about to lose the seat of state government and hardly an unbiased source. The more favorable opinion came from a newspaper in Burlington, site of the earlier territorial capitol. Either way, the building housed the state government for 26 years, from 1858 until the permanent golden-domed statehouse opened in 1884. Like its predecessor in Iowa City, the first Des Moines capitol originally had a dome. But the dome was too heavy and was soon removed because its weight cracked the walls. “Stabilizing rods were run through the building from east to west,” Hockett wrote, noting that at least one senator was injured in 1868 “when large chunks of plaster” fell during a committee meeting, “burying them in rubbish of mortar and lime.” “Without the dome, the unassuming Brick Capitol could be, and was, mistaken for a schoolhouse or a hotel,” Hockett wrote. A domed cupola crowns the Brick Capitol in this rendering from 1857. Part of the problem was the building site, a marshy area east of the Des Moines River. Ten years after its completion, the Brick Capitol was slowly sinking. To help, a crew jacked it up and added a fourth story at ground level, which made the building “thick-waisted and dumpy,” according to another source in Hockett’s research. Construction for the current capitol began in 1871 and lasted more than 13 years. By 1886, the government had abandoned the brick building, “which went on offering covering to anyone or anything,” Hockett wrote. “Bats and owls roosted in it. Children played on the staircases. … The homeless day and night drifted in and out. “They came to use the toilets, but no one bothered to drain the privy vaults or fill them in; eventually the odor became unbearable, and in May 1889, after numerous complaints, the city of Des Moines ordered the state to clean up the mess.” After an 1892 fire gutted the building, a long-awaited Soldiers and Sailors Monument was erected on the site of the Brick Capitol. In 1984, the site was marked by a concrete plaque and time capsule that is to be opened in 2084. A plaque at the site of the Brick Capitol quotes the Rev. John Kasson’s address during the 1884 dedication of the current statehouse: “Our first prayer beneath this high dome is that here the moral and political foundations of this imperial state may be so deeply and wisely laid that remote generations shall recall and celebrate the wisdom and virtues of their ancestors.” A time capsule lies below, to be opened in 2084. Dave Elbert has covered local history and business news for more than 40 years, first for the Des Moines Register and then the Business Record. Find more of Elbert’s Backstories at dsmmagazine.com. ...read more read less