Tenn-e-secrets: Tombs of the Capitol

This Tenn-e-secret hides in plain site amidst the very hub of our state government.

Take a tour of the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville, and your tour guide (depending on which one or how they feel that day) may or may not mention that the beautiful building is home to tombs.

Yes, the U.S. Capitol Building famously has a crypt and Washington’s Tomb. But both of those chambers are empty. Not so for the Nashville structure that welcomes thousands of visitors each year, not to mention the hundreds of elected officials and state employees that occupy it almost every day.

The commission to design Tennessee’s state capitol building went to Philadelphia architect William Strickland. One of his first big commissions, the Second Bank of the United States, would look familiar to anyone who’s visited The Parthenon in Centennial Park. Strickland also designed the United States Naval Asylum, and United States Mint buildings in Philadelphia, Charlotte, and New Orleans.

Strickland modeled the Tennessee State Capitol after an Ionic temple with Greek Revival architecture. The cornerstone was laid in 1845 and was completed 14 years later in 1859 at a 2024 cost-equivalent of $30.5 million.

But Strickland never saw the building completed. He died in 1854 and the legislature at the time bestowed upon him a big (if not strange) honor — they allowed him to be entombed in the northeast wall. He lies there still.

Years later (in 1880), Samual Dold Morgan passed away. He was the chairman of the State Building Commission at the time of the capitol’s construction. He was entombed in the capitol’s southeast corner, near the south entrance.

The final resting place of former President James K. Polk and his wife, Sarah, are not in the walls of the capitol but in a white tomb on the capitol grounds.