State House, Bermuda

Bermuda was settled, unintentionally, in 1609, by the Virginia Company, when its flagship Sea Venture was driven onto the reefs off St. George's Island to prevent her foundering.

The survivors, 150 human settlers and crew members and one dog, spent most of the next year on St. George's, before most resumed their voyage to Jamestown, Virginia in two newly constructed ships Deliverance and Patience.

The State House was built along Italian lines, due, reportedly, to then-Governor Nathaniel Butler's conviction that Bermuda shared the same latitude and climate.

The State House was Bermuda's first stone building (other than the open walls of fortifications), but subsequent Bermudian buildings did not follow its design; what became typical Bermudian architecture incorporated stone walls, topped with angled, slate roofs, all made from the local limestone sandstone.

The State House was one of the sites (the others mostly being military) illustrated on a map of Bermuda (shown at left) published in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, by Captain John Smith in 1624.