Workers are racing against a hard deadline at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, where a sweeping $182 million renovation of the historic building and the underground Legislative Plaza is entering its final stretch, with officials targeting completion before the 2027 legislative session and gubernatorial inauguration. Restoration crews are replacing windows, doors and portions of the Capitol's copper roof, while below ground, Legislative Plaza is being transformed from a former office complex into a public-facing visitor center for the entire Capitol campus.
According to News Channel 5 Nashville, the project has entered its final phase, and state officials say renovations to both the Capitol and Legislative Plaza remain on track for completion before lawmakers, visitors and Tennessee's next governor gather there in 2027. The 70-year-old copper roof is being replaced in part because its gutter system has failed, a fix that grew out of a broader reassessment of the building's needs. The Tennessee State Building Commission more than doubled the roof and window repair budget from $14.3 million to $28.8 million in October 2024, after structural assessments determined a full roof replacement was necessary rather than a simple repair.
Legislative Plaza's Shift From Offices to Public Gateway
Legislative Plaza, originally built between 1970 and 1975 to expand underground committee rooms and office space for the Tennessee General Assembly, formerly housed lawmakers' offices before they relocated to the Cordell Hull Building in 2017, according to Centric Architecture. That move freed up the 116,000-square-foot space for its current transformation into a visitor center, and architecture firm EOA Architects designed two new public entry towers along 6th Avenue North to give the underground facility a street-level entrance it previously lacked.
The renovated visitor center will include a new home for the Tennessee State Museum's military history exhibits, a museum dedicated to the Capitol's own history, and general visitor amenities. John Hull said, per the seed reporting, that the visitor area is the gateway to the Capitol. Global construction firm Skanska was awarded a $126 million contract by the Tennessee Department of General Services to handle interior office overhauls, mechanical and electrical modernization, and plaza resurfacing across the district, with interior demolition beginning in early 2025, according to Skanska. Project leaders have compared the forthcoming facility's scale and function to the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C., per the UTC Blog.
Underground, a Blasted Tunnel and a Traditional Gathering Space
Beneath the plaza, renovation of the Motlow Tunnel connecting Legislative Plaza to the Capitol has required controlled rock blasting operations and pedestrian detours along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard throughout 2025 and 2026, the Tennessee Department of General Services detailed in the same account. The tunnel serves as the primary underground pedestrian walkway beneath city streets in the area. Legislative Plaza itself has traditionally hosted gubernatorial inaugurations and frequently hosts demonstrations and public gatherings during legislative sessions, making its scheduled reopening ahead of the 2027 ceremony especially consequential for state officials, who remain optimistic about meeting the deadline.
A New Bronze Crockett Set to Replace the Toppled Carmack Statue
Above ground, Tennessee is preparing to install a new bronze statue of David Crockett and his two hunting dogs on the Capitol grounds, replacing the Edward Carmack statue that was toppled during protests in 2020. The Tennessee State Capitol Commission selected West Virginia sculptor Jamie Lester of Vandalia Bronze in April 2025 to design the roughly 8-to-9-foot bronze piece, titled “Guardian of the Frontier,” which depicts Crockett alongside his rifle and his hunting dogs, Tigger and Rattler, according to the Memphis Flyer. Lester was chosen after an advisory committee narrowed 28 proposals from sculptors nationwide down to his design.
The Crockett statue now has a finalized design awaiting casting and installation. The Memphis Flyer's reporting notes that the Tennessee General Assembly authorized a David Crockett monument on Capitol grounds back in 2021, building on state efforts that trace to the establishment of the David Crockett Commission in 2012 — years before Carmack's statue came down. A legislative sponsor of the Crockett monument has noted that the 2020 removal of Carmack cleared the physical space that the new statue will now occupy. Project leaders are coordinating installation of the Crockett statue with the annual Capitol Christmas tree, and David Plummer said officials are still working through crane and timing details for both.
Why the Carmack Statue Came Down
Edward Carmack, honored with a statue two decades after his death, was a newspaper editor in Nashville and Memphis in the late 1800s and an avid prohibitionist. State leaders had debated removing his monument for years because of Carmack's controversial legacy: he endorsed some lynchings of Black men who were attempting to establish a grocery store in a Memphis neighborhood, and he incited a mob that burned the newspaper where Ida B. Wells worked, after Wells decried the lynchings he had endorsed. Wells, an early figure in the civil rights movement, is remembered for that reporting. Carmack himself was shot and killed by the son of one of his political rivals.
Any future move of a public historic monument on Capitol grounds is legally constrained by the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, enacted in 2013 and updated in 2016, which requires a two-thirds waiver vote from the Tennessee Historical Commission before a statue can be removed, relocated or renamed, according to mxdwn Music. That statute has shaped past state debates over contested monuments on public land.
A 19th-Century Landmark Gets a Modern Reset
The Tennessee State Capitol itself opened in 1859, designed in the Greek Revival style by Philadelphia architect William Strickland, who died during construction in 1854 and is entombed in the building's north wall, according to the Nashville Downtown Partnership. The building, featuring Ionic and Corinthian columns modeled after classical Greek temples, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971. Project leaders expect construction to be finished by the end of 2026, and once several more months of work wrap up, the Capitol complex will welcome lawmakers, visitors and Tennessee's next governor to a campus reshaped both physically and symbolically for the state's next chapter.
