Sangamon County

The Illinois State Capitol, located in Springfield, Illinois, is the building that houses the executive and legislative branches of the government of... the U.S. state of Illinois. The current building is the sixth capitol of the state since its admission as a state of the United States in 1818. The current capitol is in the architectural style of the French Renaissance. The capitol was designed by Cochrane and Garnsey, an architecture and design firm based in Chicago, Illinois. Ground was first broken for the new capitol on March 11, 1869, and it was completed twenty years later for a total cost of $4,500,000. The capitol dome is covered in zinc to provide a silvery facade which does not weather. The interior of the dome features a plaster frieze painted to resemble bronze, which illustrates scenes from Illinois history, and stained glass windows . The seal featured in the top of the dome is the seal used by Illinois prior to the American Civil War. It differs from the modern seal in that the phrase "State Sovereignty" is above the phrase "National Union.
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The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum documents the life of the 16th U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, and the course of the American... Civil War. Combining traditional scholarship with 21st century showmanship techniques, the popular museum continues to rank as one of the most visited libraries. It is located in Springfield, Illinois and is operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, a governmental agency of the state government of Illinois. It is not affiliated with the U.S. National Archives and its system of Presidential Libraries. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum has been recognized with two awards: a Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Themed Entertainment Association, and an award from The Lincoln Group of New York, for "being the greatest achievement in America to encourage the study and appreciation of Abraham Lincoln and the times in which he lived." The museum contains life-size dioramas of Lincoln's boyhood home, areas of the White House, the presidential box at Ford's Theater, and the settings of key events in Lincoln's life, as well as pictures, artifacts and other memorabilia.
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Illinois is the 25th most extensive and the 5th most populous of the 50 United States, and is often noted as a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad economic base. Illinois is a major transportation hub. The Port of Chicago connects the... state to other global ports from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean; as well as the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois River. For decades, O'Hare International Airport has ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. In the 1810s, settlers began arriving from Kentucky. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. The state's population originally grew from south to north. Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River, one of the few natural harbors on southern Lake Michigan.
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