This small gore-shaped park marks the location of the state's first capitol. In 1805, Congress created a Michigan territory and, shortly thereafter, President Jefferson selected Augustus Woodward to serve as territorial chief justice. Woodward took it upon himself to build a great city in the vast wilderness and was not deterred by the fire of 1805 that destroyed the village, or Detroit's surrender to the British in the War of 1812. Until the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, Detroit's population grew slowly. Woodward had a courthouse built on Griswold. The architectural thinking of that time—strongly influenced by the beliefs and preferences of Thomas Jefferson—assumed that important government buildings should be in the style of classical Greece. Architect Obed Wait designed a modest but impressive brick Greek Revival structure with a very tall steeple. Pictures remain but this early courthouse did not survive the century.
Census 1830 counted more than 30,000 residents
in Michigan—the minimum Congress required for statehood. Thanks to Stephen
Mason's hard work, Michigan became a state in 1835. The legislature first
met in Obed Wait's
courthouse. The new state's constitution said that the legislature had to designate
a permanent capitol within 11 years. Detroit vied for this honor as did
many
other locations. After much conflict, the legislature in 1846 decided that
the capitol should be moved into the wilderness at Lansing.
Albert Weinert's attractive statue of Stephen Mason—the
state's first governor — is in Capitol Park, as is the historical marker
for the Finney Hotel. The Farwell
Building, erected in 1915 and representing
the Chicago
style architecture
of that era, faces this park.
National: Listed March 18, 1999
Photo: Ren Farley, September 2002