Goodhue's influential 'prairie skyscraper' design for the Nebraska State Capitol, inaugurated in 1928, has long defied stylistic categorisation. A now greatly overlooked element of its unclassifiable style was noted in numerous assessments at the time which identified 'Oriental' 'Assyrian' or 'Assyrian-Babylonian' features which, despite (or because of) their associations with a deep antiquity, contributed to the new, distinctly American architecture of the building, and of its sculptural programme by Lee Lawrie. This article considers the Assyrianising tendencies of the Capitol in the context of Art Deco interest in 'revival' of ancient styles, and American civic architecture's engagement with the ancient Middle Eastern past as an origin of civilization. Goodhue's close collaboration with Lawrie, muralist Hildreth Meière, and 'symbologist' Hartley Burr Alexander exemplified the productive and creative application of revived ancient iconography, which was employed in Nebraska in the service of various historical narratives and as a reflection of the designers' aesthetic appreciation for Assyrian sculptures. Finally this article also investigates how the Capitol's treatment of the ancient Mesopotamian 'lawgiver' Hammurabi influenced 'Hammurabis' in subsequent sculptural contexts, including in the State Capitol of Louisiana, American federal government buildings, and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 1In 1929, the year after architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue's new State Capitol at Lincoln, Nebraska (fig. 1) opened to the public, the Nebraska-based journal The Prairie Schooner published a seven-page poem by a certain Rosemonde E. Richards, called simply 'The Nebraska State Capitol'. 1 In striking, ecstatic ekphrasis the poet indicated her appreciation for the building's cutting edge modern design, a towering skyscraper rising from the prairies, and for its elaborately planned sculptural programme celebrating the state, the family, agriculture, and the sublime:Over the shadowed door And around the whole monument, Egypt and the Orient, Greece and Rome, And all nations of the world Have come to merge in one great architecture.
And later:In the sloping walls We fashioned a building of the Pharaohs.