The State House and What Makes New Hampshire's Government Different

The State House in Concord, at 107 North Main Street, was built from 1816 to 1819, with Stuart Park as master builder. It is built of Concord granite, quarried nearby. The first building was a two-story structure in the Federal style, capped by a domed lantern, and it appears to have been based in part on a plate in Robert Morris's Select Architecture, a London pattern book of 1757.

It was enlarged twice. In 1864–1866, to designs by the Boston architect Gridley J.F. Bryant, it gained a third story, the portico and the gilded dome, which is patterned after the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris. In 1909–1910 the firm of Peabody & Stearns extended it westward, nearly doubling its size. The granite of each period differs in color: the original stone is stained by iron, and the later stone, cut from deeper in the quarries, is purer.

The building stands three stories high, topped by a gilded dome set on an octagonal base, rising 149 feet. When it was built in 1819 it housed 204 legislators. The National Register nomination that describes it, written in 1983, counted 424 members and called it “the largest state legislature in the country.”

Through the main entrance is Doric Hall, now the Hall of Flags, which dates to 1819 and was inspired by Charles Bulfinch’s hall in the Massachusetts State House. On the second floor, Representatives Hall, directly above it, and the Senate Chamber to the north are still in their original places, though both have been much enlarged and rearranged. The murals in the Senate Chamber are by Barry Faulkner and were installed in 1943.

The eagle on top of the dome is a copper replica, put up in 1957, of the original wooden eagle erected in 1818. Its head is turned to its right, the sign of a peace eagle, unlike the war eagle it replaced.

The grounds hold statues of Daniel Webster (1886), General John Stark (1890), John Hale (1892), Commodore George Perkins (1902, by Daniel Chester French) and Franklin Pierce (1914); the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch of 1892; a veterans memorial of 1953; and a reproduction of the Liberty Bell, cast in France and installed in 1950.

The state’s own history of the building, revised from the 1977 Manual for the General Court, tells these.

• The first talk of a state capitol came in 1814. Concord, Hopkinton and Salisbury competed for it, and Salisbury offered seven thousand dollars for the honor. Concord won, and by 1816 the decision to build there was final.
• Concord saved a considerable expense by building it of granite from what are now the Swenson quarries, at the north end of the town, with the stones cut, shaped and faced by inmates of the prison.
• A huge gold-painted wooden eagle was raised to the top of the dome in 1818. At the ceremonies, over which Governor William Plumer presided, one toast ran: “The American Eagle. May the shadow of his wings protect every acre of our united continent and the lightning of his eye flash terror and defeat through the ranks of our enemies.”
• The building cost about $82,000, and the legislature first met in it in 1819. Its builder, Stuart J. Park, has a Concord street named for him: Park Street, north of the building.
• In 1863, during the Civil War, the city of Manchester offered no less than half a million dollars to build a new capitol there. The legislature kept the capitol in Concord and enlarged it instead, from 1864 to 1866, for about $200,000.
• A building of its own for the State Library, planned from 1881, made room for the Supreme Court as well when it was finished in 1895.
• By 1909 a bill was introduced for about a million dollars, for what amounted to an entirely new state house, and Manchester again offered the million if the State House were moved there. The legislature again kept it in Concord, and under Governor Quimby the whole building was remodeled, made fire-proof and given electric elevators.
• The State House Annex, planned in 1937, had its cornerstone laid in 1938 and cost $327,000, a federal grant included. An underground passageway joins it to the State House.
• Under Governor Lane Dwinell the weathered wooden eagle was replaced by a metal replica, and the statues of John Stark, Daniel Webster, President Pierce, John P. Hale and Commodore Perkins were cleaned and made tarnishproof.

The state’s own history of New Hampshire, revised from the same 1977 Manual, tells these.

• In 1623 Captain John Mason and others sent David Thomson, Edward Hilton and Thomas Hilton to found a fishing colony at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. Thomson’s party settled at Little Harbor, or “Pannaway,” now Rye; the Hiltons, eight miles upriver, at a place they called Northam, afterwards named Dover.
• Captain John Smith first named the region “North Virginia,” but King James later changed it to “New England.” New Hampshire takes its name from Captain Mason’s own English county of Hampshire.
• New Hampshire became a royal province in 1679, with John Cutt as president. From 1698 it was under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, and it stayed so until 1741.
• Benning Wentworth was its chief magistrate from 1741 to 1766, and granted more than a hundred towns after 1761, some of them in what is now Vermont.
• Meshech Weare was elected the first state “president.”
• New Hampshire was the ninth and deciding state to accept the national Constitution, and its John Langdon was President of the Senate when Washington was elected the first President.

The constitution calls the legislature the General Court of New Hampshire (Part Second, Article 3). Its House of Representatives is to have not less than 375 or more than 400 members (Part Second, Article 9), a limit an amendment set in 1942; the Senate has 24 members (Part Second, Article 25). The Senate began in 1784 with 12 senators, and an amendment in 1877 raised it to 24.

As this site’s record stands, the House has 400 seats and 382 sitting members, with 18 vacant, and the Senate 24 districts. Each member’s page is on the Officials page.

Against the other states: the National Conference of State Legislatures’ table of June 19, 2024 counts 424 seats in New Hampshire’s legislature, the most of any state; the next largest, Pennsylvania’s, has 253. Most states elect their senators for four years; New Hampshire’s senators, like its representatives, serve two.

The pay of a legislator is written into the constitution. Part Second, Article 15 gives each member $200 “as compensation in full for their services for the term elected,” and the presiding officers of the two chambers $250. The figures were set by an amendment of 1889.

Members are also paid mileage for each day they attend on legislative days, but not after the legislature has been in session for 45 legislative days or after July 1, whichever comes first. A special session adds $3 a day, for no more than 15 days, with the usual mileage.

The National Conference of State Legislatures, in a page updated July 28, 2021, puts New Hampshire’s among the ten “part-time lite” legislatures, one of its two part-time groups. Of the part-time legislatures it says that lawmakers spend on average the equivalent of half of a full-time job on legislative work, for pay low enough that they need other income to make a living. It calls them traditional or citizen legislatures, found most often in the smallest, more rural states.

The Governor is the state’s supreme executive magistrate, and the constitution gives the office the title His Excellency (Part Second, Article 41). The office was called President until an amendment of 1792.

The governor is chosen biennially, in November (Part Second, Article 42): a two-year term. Until 1877 the election was every year. A candidate must be 30 years old and have lived in the state for the 7 years before the election. If no one has a plurality of the votes, more than any other candidate, the House and Senate together elect one of the two with the most votes, by joint ballot.

Five Executive Councilors are elected biennially “for advising the governor in the executive part of government” (Part Second, Article 60), one from each of five districts drawn as nearly equal in population as may be (Part Second, Article 65). Until 1792 the council was made up of members of the House and Senate, elected by them.

The Governor and Council act together. Judges, the attorney general and other officers are nominated and appointed by the governor and council; the nomination must be made at least three days before, and no one takes office unless a majority of the council agrees (Part Second, Article 46). The governor and council each have “a negative on each other” in these choices (Part Second, Article 47).

In the Council’s own words, each of the five Executive Councilors represents one fifth of the population, and Councilors are elected every two years, concurrently with the Governor; a candidate must live in the district. It calls the Councilors the constituent’s eyes and ears in Concord. The Governor and the Executive Council says what the Council approves.

The judicial power is vested in the supreme court, a trial court of general jurisdiction known as the superior court, and the lower courts the legislature establishes (Part Second, Article 72-a, added in 1966). The chief justice of the supreme court is the administrative head of all the courts (Part Second, Article 73-a, 1978).

Judges are appointed. The Governor nominates and the Executive Council confirms (Part Second, Article 46). Once appointed, a judge holds office during good behavior, with no fixed term (Part Second, Article 73), and no one may serve as a judge after reaching seventy, a limit in the constitution since 1792 (Part Second, Article 78). The Courts says how the courts are arranged.

• Tour the State House
• Contact your legislators

• Concord Civic District, National Register of Historic Places nomination (National Park Service, 1983)npgallery.nps.gov
• History of the State House, revised from the 1977 Manual for the General Court (NH.gov)nh.gov
• History of New Hampshire, revised from the 1977 Manual for the General Court (NH.gov)nh.gov
• The New Hampshire Constitutionnh.gov
• About the Executive Councilcouncil.nh.gov
• Number of Legislators and Length of Terms in Years (National Conference of State Legislatures)ncsl.org
• Full- and Part-Time Legislatures (National Conference of State Legislatures)ncsl.org
• Find your legislators, by townGranite Record