page_title: History of modern period domes
section_title: Legislative buildings
hierarchical_section_title: History of modern period domes / Nineteenth century / Iron and glass / Legislative buildings
caption_attribution_description: English: Parliament of Hungary from across the Danube, in Budapest. Magyar: Az Országház épülete kissé oldalról; a Duna túlsó partjáról.
context_page_description: Domes built in the 19th and 20th centuries benefited from more efficient techniques for producing iron and steel as well as advances in structural analysis.
  Metal-framed domes of the 19th century often imitated earlier masonry dome designs in a variety of styles, especially in church architecture, but were also used to create glass domes over shopping arcades and hothouses, domes over locomotive sheds and exhibition halls, and domes larger than any others in the world. The variety of domed buildings, such as parliaments and capitol buildings, gasometers, observatories, libraries, and churches, were enabled by the use of reinforced concrete ribs, lightweight papier-mâché, and triangulated framing.
  In the 20th century, planetarium domes spurred the invention by Walther Bauersfeld of both thin shells of reinforced concrete and geodesic domes. The use of steel, computers, and finite element analysis enabled yet larger spans. Tension membrane structure became popular for domed sports stadiums, which also innovated with rigid retractable domed roofs.
context_section_description: The current dome over the United States Capitol building, although painted white and crowning a masonry building, is also made of cast iron. The dome was built between 1855 and 1866, replacing a lower wooden dome with copper roofing from 1824. It has a 30-meter diameter. It was completed just two years after the Old St. Louis County Courthouse, which has the first cast iron dome built in the United States. The initial design of the capitol dome was influenced by a number of European church domes, particularly St. Paul's in London, St. Peter's in Rome, the Panthéon in Paris, Les Invalides in Paris, and St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The architect, Thomas U. Walter, designed a double dome interior based on that of the Panthéon in Paris. 
  Dome construction for state capitol buildings and county courthouses in the United States flourished in the period between the American Civil War and World War I. Most capitols built between 1864 and 1893 were landmarks for their cities and had gilded domes. Many American state capitol building domes were built in the late 19th or early 20th century in the American Renaissance style and cover rotundas open to the public as commemorative spaces. Examples include the Indiana State House, Texas State Capitol, and the Wisconsin State Capitol.
  The Reichstag Palace, built between 1883 and 1893 to house the Parliament of the new German Empire, included a dome made of iron and glass as part of its unusual mixture of Renaissance and Baroque components. Controversially, the 74 meter tall dome stood seven meters taller than the dome of the Imperial Palace in the city, drawing criticism from Kaiser Wilhelm II.
  The Hungarian Parliament Building was built in the Gothic style, although most of the 1882 design competition entries used Neo-Renaissance, and it includes a domed central hall. The large, ribbed, egg-shaped dome topped with a spire was influenced by the dome of the Maria vom Siege church in Vienna. It has a sixteen sided outer shell with an iron skeleton that rises 96 meters high, and an inner shell star vault supported on sixteen stone pillars. The Dome Hall is used to display the coronation crown of Hungary and statuary of monarchs and statesmen. The dome was structurally complete by the end of 1895.
caption: The Hungarian Parliament Building.
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