cass gilbert was born in zanesville, ohio but as a youngster moved out with his family to st. paul. he basically claimed st. paul as his home and in 1895 was selected as the architect for this state capitol building. and there's a lot of kind of interesting stories behind him. he was a qualified architect for one thing. he -- his plans were kind of what they were looking for so every architect in the competition had to submit a drawing of what they wanted the building to be and some of the requirements, the board of capitol commissioners wanted was to have a building with a big dome, similar to what you'd see in washington, d.c., kind of emblematic center of a state capitol would be that dome and then also some of the features he was able to add to that was appealing to them. there also was some questions, people questioned his connection to the vice president of that capitol board of commissioners who was channing seabury, he lived next door to his mother, cass gilbert's mother and they were friends and there was a good relationship between cass gilbert and the vice president of th