Our State Capitol is easily the grandest sandstone building in Idaho. It was built from the plans of John E. Tourtellotte and Charles F. Hummel in the classical style favored by the architects of nearly all state capitols across the country.

These buildings have central domes, porticos with pediments, symmetrical floor plans and facades, and they use one or all of the Greek and Roman orders of architecture. Our Capitol uses the Corinthian, most ornate of the classical orders, on the portico and great central columns surrounding the rotunda.

The state purchased the Table Rock quarry east of the city from Jellison Brothers and contracted with Charles D. Storey to get the stone, shape it into pieces as specified in the plans, and put it in place in the building. (Storey, a prominent Republican, served three terms in the Legislature, one of them as speaker of the House).

The capitol was built in two phases. The central block, with its high dome and Corinthian portico, was begun in 1905 and completed in 1912. House and Senate wings were finished in 1920. The dome is built on a framework of steel beams and the front steps and giant decorative spheres are made of Montana granite.

Nearly all the rest is Boise sandstone, quarried at Table Rock and cut into finished pieces by giant stone saws set up near the construction site. The building has undergone interior renovations, floor plan revisions and minor restoration in the past, but the addition of underground wings now nearing completion is by far the largest building program at the Capitol since 1920.

Sandstone quarried at Table Rock especially for this project was supplied by Gerhard Borbonus Landscaping Inc. The firm acquired the quarry in 1982 and is again producing building stone and carved architectural elements as well as that used in landscaping. We eagerly await the grand reopening of the Capitol and a chance to see the work.

The Union Pacific train station of 1924, by New York architects Carrere & Hastings, has finely carved decorative elements of local sandstone. It was during this era that Boise sandstone attracted the attention of architects and builders from coast to coast for its exceptional qualities of workability and durability. Great Spokane architect Kirtland K. Cutter used it in the first two floors of his 1914 Davenport Hotel.

Whitehouse & Price of Spokane ordered whole trainloads of the material for that city's Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The architects told a 1928 interviewer that they chose Boise stone not only for its durability but for the warmth of its color. They used it throughout the interior. Twenty-four carloads of 40 tons each were shipped to Spokane for the project. A work force of as many as 100 men was employed at Table Rock while big orders like this were being quarried and shipped.

Even larger projects resulted after Yale University commissioned architect James Gamble Rogers of New York, who has been called "the Father of Collegiate Gothic," to develop a campus master plan in 1924. Gamble chose Boise sandstone for use in the Harkness Tower, Harkness Memorial Quadrangle, Sterling Memorial Library, Sterling Law School, Sterling School of Graduate Studies, and six residential colleges.

A partial list of other buildings in which sandstone quarried in Boise was used includes these in California: The Southern Pacific Building, San Francisco; high school, Bakersfield; Western State Bank, Los Angeles, and Church of the Holy Family, Glendale.

Others elsewhere are the Courthouse and Heroes Memorial Building, Carson City, Nev.; auditorium building, Colorado Springs, Co.; St. Dominic's Cathedral, Denver; auditorium, The Dalles, Ore.; and the Vancouver Hotel, Vancouver, British Columbia. A complete list would probably extend to a hundred or more.

As you wander around Boise you can find examples of local sandstone used in a variety of ways ever since the city was founded. You can find it in buildings dating from 1864, and in walls, fence posts, hitching posts and carriage steps. At least a thousand local buildings have foundations of this wonderful material.

It is nice to know that the historic Table Rock quarry is still producing quality sandstone, and that there is enough of it to last for another century or more.

Arthur Hart writes this column on Idaho history for the Idaho Statesman each Sunday. E-mail histnart@mindspring.com.