At the time Indianapolis was a frontier site, nearly 60 miles (97 km) from the nearest settlement of significance, making large scale construction impractical.

To complicate matters, no road existed and a path for the wagons had to be cut through the dense forests during the winter transit as the long caravan moved north.

Colonel Samuel Merrill, the state treasurer, was authorized by the General Assembly to oversee the move.

A commission was established and Commissioner James Blake offered a $150 prize to the architect who could design the best state house.

Twenty-one proposals were received, some from local firms and others from as far as the east coast (New York and Philadelphia) and the south (Nashville, Tennessee).

The design from the firm of Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis was selected by the commission and then approved by the General Assembly on January 26, 1832.

The legislature had anticipated paying for the building by the sale of the remaining lots of the donation grant of land that the Federal government had given the state for a capital city, but only $13,000 was received in the sale in May 1832, with the remaining unsold lots having an estimated value of only $3,650, meaning that other sources of funds were required.

[5][6] The statehouse was popular immediately after its construction, but by the 1860s Greek Revival architecture had fallen out of style and the building was beginning to become decrepit.

An article in the Indianapolis News on January 30, 1877, summed up the problems, noting that it "is too small if it were good, and it is too bad if it were big enough".

Demolition of the building began on December 11, 1877, and was completed on March 12, 1878, with the razing of the last portion of the structure still standing, the dome.

The General Assembly relocated to a large office building that had been built in 1865 and was already housing the Supreme Court.

In 1887, before the new state house had been completed, enough of the lower floors were usable for the government to move out of the cramped office space and begin holding sessions in the new structure.

Governor Williams, who was famed for his frugality, was able to complete the project for $1.8 million and returned the extra $200,000 to the general fund.

Not wanting to repeat the mistakes made in the construction of the previous statehouse, the legislature required the new capitol to be built on a solid foundation so that it would last for many decades.

Edwin May died in February of that year, and Adolph Scherer supervised the project for the entire construction period.

The items included annual reports from all the government agencies, a Bible, samples of several varieties of crops grown in Indiana, several new coins, local maps and newspapers, a book on the history of Indianapolis, and pamphlets from many of the city's institutions.

[12] In front of the State House stands a statue of Oliver Morton, governor of Indiana during the Civil War.

[citation needed] In 1988, the administration of Governor Robert D. Orr proposed that the Indiana General Assembly renovate the statehouse as part of "Hoosier Celebration '88", the year of the building's 100th anniversary.

[18] During the renovation process, all of the statehouse's stonework, consisting of marble, granite, and limestone columns and blocks, was cleaned and polished.

[18] In 1984, the Indiana Statehouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and it remains a protected building.

[20] Located inside and around the Statehouse property are more than 40 works of public art that depict many important individuals and events related to the state of Indiana.