Oregon State Capitol Salem
— — a white drum under a gold pioneer.
Not only on a wall.
“Oregon's third statehouse, finished in 1938 after the second one burned. White Vermont marble, a flat cylindrical drum where most capitols put a dome, and on top of it a 23-foot gilded bronze of an axe-bearing pioneer facing west. Art Deco lines, modernist by capitol standards, and a long mall of fountains and elms walking south toward Willamette University. The interior rotunda is travertine and bronze, with murals tracing Lewis and Clark, the McLoughlin meeting, the Oregon Trail, and the first wagon party out of the Whitman Mission.
Oregon State Capitol Salem, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Oregon State Capitol stands on Court Street in downtown Salem and is the third building to serve as the seat of Oregon government. The first capitol burned in 1855, the second in 1935. The current building, designed by the New York firm Trowbridge & Livingston with Francis Keally, opened in 1938 in a stripped-classical Art Deco idiom rare among American statehouses. The exterior is clad in white Vermont marble. The capitol is surrounded by Capitol Mall and Willson Park, a fountain-and-elm landscape that walks south toward Willamette University.
Where most American capitols rise to a dome, Salem's rises to a flat marble drum, 166 feet above the ground floor. On top of the drum stands the Oregon Pioneer, a 23-foot gilded bronze of an axe-bearing settler facing the Willamette Valley, sculpted by Ulric Ellerhusen and installed in 1938. The interior rotunda is finished in travertine, with four large murals by Frank Schwarz and Barry Faulkner depicting moments from the founding state narrative. The exterior marble was quarried in Danby, Vermont, and shipped west by rail for the post-fire rebuild.
The capitol is open to the public on weekdays, and free guided tours typically run during legislative sessions. A tower tour, when offered, climbs a narrow stair to the open-air observation platform at the base of the Pioneer, giving a long view across Salem to the Coast Range. The grounds are open daily and the Capitol Mall and Willson Park fountains run through warm months. A major seismic-and-systems renovation has been under way since the early 2020s, so wings and entrances rotate; current visitor access is posted at oregonlegislature.gov.