Throughout its 250-year history, the US has produced some striking and unique architecture that you can’t find anywhere else — and lots of it can look wildly different across state lines.
Defining what we consider “coolest” is hard. We evaluated every state on its own terms and found that the architecture across all 50 states and Washington, DC, can be as diverse as the country’s population.
In states like California and Massachusetts, picking the most striking building meant finding ones that look futuristic and elegant, like something out of a science-fiction movie. In other states, like Maine and the Carolinas, we found that the coolest buildings are distinctive because of their place in history or their states’ cultures.
Whether you’re looking for a piece of history or a glimpse into the future, these buildings can show you what different worlds look like.
James Grebey and Jacob Shamsian contributed to an earlier version of this story.
ALABAMA: Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio Passenger Terminal
The Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio Passenger Terminal in Mobile, Alabama, which has Spanish influences with its cream walls and red clay tiles, was designed by P. Thornton Marye. It was completed in 1907 and has undergone restoration since passenger train service ceased in the 1950s.
ALASKA: The University of Alaska’s Museum of the North
The University of Alaska Museum of the North is home to numerous exhibits showcasing the native cultures, natural wonders, and wildlife of our nation’s largest state. It’s also a stylish refuge from the cold.
ARIZONA: Chapel of the Holy Cross
The Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona was completed in 1956, and it juts majestically from a red stone butte, some 200 feet above the ground.
ARKANSAS: Thorncrown Chapel
The beautiful Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs looks like an open-air structure, but it’s actually a serene, glass-enclosed architectural marvel.
CALIFORNIA: The Chemosphere
It was designed in 1960, but the Chemosphere still looks futuristic. It’s a house with 2,200 square feet of space, perched atop a 30-foot concrete pole. And it’s survived every major Californian earthquake in the San Fernando Valley since it was built.
COLORADO: Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, features some of the best-preserved prehistoric landscapes of the Ancestral Puebloan people. These ancient dwellings, where the Ancestral Puebloans once lived, were constructed on the sides of natural cliffs.
While most dwellings had only one to five rooms, the Cliff Palace, the largest known cliff dwelling in North America, had 150 rooms, 23 sacred meeting spaces, and housed about 100 people, according to the National Park Service.
CONNECTICUT: Grace Farms
The main feature of Grace Farms in New Canaan is a serpentine wooden pavilion that links glass-walled rooms, including a library, stage, tea room, and a gym with a full basketball court. Completed in 2015, it’s open to the public for free.
DELAWARE: Wilmington’s Grand Opera House
The country’s oldest state has some classic buildings that stand the test of time. Wilmington’s Grand Opera House, built in 1871, is as classic as it gets.
FLORIDA: The Salvador Dalí Museum
The Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg is a fittingly unique tribute to the beloved master of surrealism. The museum boasts the largest collection of Dalí’s work outside Europe.
GEORGIA: The Earth Lodge on Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park
This might not look much like other buildings in this list, but the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park’s Earth Lodge dates back to the year 1015, per the National Park Service.
The lodge is a reconstructed council chamber of the native Mississippian culture. While the walls and ceiling were reconstructed in the late 1930s, the clay floor remains the same as the original, dating back over a thousand years.
HAWAII: ʻIolani Palace
ʻIolani Palace in Honolulu is the only royal palace on United States soil. David Kalākaua, the last reigning king of Hawaiʻi and the first monarch to travel around the world, was inspired by the European palaces he saw during his 1881 voyage.
IDAHO: The Dog Bark Park Inn
The Dog Bark Park Inn in Cottonwood is a delightful piece of American kitsch. The bed and breakfast is shaped like two charming beagles.
ILLINOIS: Bahá’í House of Worship
Although there are between 5 and 6 million adherents to the Bahá’í Faith, there are only eight continental houses of worship worldwide. The one in Wilmette, Illinois, is the oldest still standing, and the only one in the United States.
INDIANA: West Baden Springs Hotel
When the West Baden Springs Hotel opened in 1902, it was billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World. While enjoying the view from inside the massive domed atrium — at one point the largest in the world — it’s easy to see why.
IOWA: Grotto of the Redemption
Father Paul Dobberstein promised to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary as she helped cure his grave case of pneumonia. His resulting Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend is made of rocks, shells, fossils, and gems pressed into concrete. It’s the size of a football field.
KANSAS: Big Well in Greensburg
The Big Well in Greensburg is a museum that rests atop its titular main attraction: the largest hand-dug well in the world, spanning 32 feet in diameter and reaching a depth of 109 feet.
KENTUCKY: Churchill Downs
Churchill Downs, most famously the host of the Kentucky Derby, can hold 120,000 excited, sometimes rowdy, racing fans at max capacity.
LOUISIANA: The Pontalba Buildings
The Pontalba Buildings, which make up two sides of New Orleans’ Jackson Square, are emblematic of the French Quarter. Some of the residences on the upper floors are believed to be the oldest continuously rented apartments in the country.
MAINE: The Portland Head Light
The Portland Head Light — one of the state’s many lighthouses — has been around since 1791. It was built under the directive of George Washington himself.
MARYLAND: The American Visionary Art Museum
The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore showcases outsider art. All the works within its wonky exterior were made by inspired, self-taught creators.
MASSACHUSETTS: Simmons Hall at MIT
Simmons Hall at MIT is the coolest dorm building in the US. It looks like a monstrous Tetris piece combined with underground caverns.
MICHIGAN: Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
The museum, one of the oldest and largest dedicated to African American history, is a three-story building designed with influences of African and local Detroit architecture. The building features a stunning 55-foot-tall glass dome ceiling.
MINNESOTA: The Marjorie McNeely Conservatory
The Marjorie McNeely Conservatory at Saint Paul’s Como Park was opened to the public in 1915 and features Japanese, Bonsai, and butterfly gardens, among others.
MISSISSIPPI: Gehry’s Pods at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art
Designed by Frank Gehry — whose striking work also includes the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain — the curved metal pods, which house pottery at Biloxi’s Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, are meant to look as if they were “dancing with the trees,” per the museum’s website.
MISSOURI: The Community Bookshelf
The parking garage at the Kansas City Library is called the Community Bookshelf. It displays the giant spines of 22 classic books that were suggested by Kansas City readers.
MONTANA: Montana State Capitol building
Construction started on the Montana State Capitol in 1896. The inside of the rotunda salutes four types of people central to the state’s early history: a native American, an explorer, a gold miner, and a cowboy.
NEBRASKA: Nebraska State Capitol Building
The Nebraska Capitol in Lincoln is one of the greatest state capitol buildings in the US. Built between 1922 and 1932, the building features artworks representing the development of law and the state of Nebraska.
NEVADA: Ward Charcoal Ovens
The Ward Charcoal Ovens in Ely were built in the 1870s for silver mining.
The distinctive beehive-shaped Ward Charcoal Ovens in Ely were built for silver mining back in the 1870s, and they still look like nothing else on the landscape.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Mount Washington Hotel
Built in 1902, the Mount Washington Hotel — today operating as the Omni Mount Washington Resort — is one of the last remaining grand hotels in the state, and is rumored to be haunted.
NEW JERSEY: Nassau Hall at Princeton University
Nassau Hall is the oldest building at Princeton University, dating back to the 1750s. While it now houses the school’s administrative offices, during the Revolutionary War it was occupied by both British and American forces and suffered damage during the battles.
NEW MEXICO: Taos Pueblo
Hundreds of years old, the Taos Pueblo is a multi-story complex built by Native Americans from the region. It looks like one big, molded piece, and it’s still used as a residence.
NEW YORK: The Chrysler Building
The Empire State Building gets all the hype, but it’s the Chrysler Building that’s really the most magnificent skyscraper in New York City. The Art Deco-style building was the tallest in the world when it was built, but it was beaten out by — you guessed it — the Empire State Building just 11 months later.
NORTH CAROLINA: The Executive Mansion
North Carolina’s Executive Mansion in Raleigh is the home of the governor.
Give it to North Carolina for having its most beautiful building designated as a civil landmark. The state’s Executive Mansion in Raleigh is the home of the governor and a high-profile event venue that’s open to public tours.
NORTH DAKOTA: The North Dakota Heritage Center
At the center of the North Dakota Heritage Center in Bismarck is a great glass cube flanked by two copper-colored wings. It’s the home of the state’s greatest treasures, including Native American historical artifacts and lots of dinosaur fossils.
OHIO: The Longaberger Company building
The Longaberger Company, which makes baskets, made a building in Newark that perfectly matches its brand. The building was closed in 2016, and it has largely sat idle since.
Plans for the property have included a hotel, a coworking space, and, most recently, a mixed-use development, but it still has an unclear path for the future.
OKLAHOMA: First Americans Museum
The First Americans Museum’s 175,000-square-foot building in Oklahoma pays homage to the state’s indigenous populations and their history. The design is inspired by the importance placed on the rising and setting sun by Native populations, with the Remembrance Walls being aligned with the sunrise.
The central half-dome is supported by 10 pillars of various stones, each representing a 10-mile stretch traveled by Native people during forced removal from their original homelands, according to the museum’s website.
OREGON: The Portland Building
In 2009, Travel + Leisure famously called The Portland Building “one of the most hated buildings in America,” and its reputation is split among architecture critics. But its shapes, strange geometric clashes of glass and stone, make it the weird building that Portland most deserves.
PENNSYLVANIA: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater
Frank Lloyd Wright‘s 1935 masterpiece Fallingwater remains Pennsylvania’s greatest work of architecture. Water falls from each level of the building into the one below, perfectly integrating with the landscape.
RHODE ISLAND: The Breakers
Built as a summer residence for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, The Breakers mansion in Newport has 70 rooms across 138,300 square feet, making it one of the largest houses in the US and an icon of Gilded Age architecture.
SOUTH CAROLINA: The International African American Museum
In South Carolina, the International African American Museum stands on top of 18 13-foot pillars that keep the museum from touching the sacred ground on which it was built.
The museum is situated on the historic site of Gadsden’s Wharf in Charleston’s Cooper River, which was the last and most significant disembarkation point in North America for enslaved Africans during the transatlantic slave trade, per the US Civil Rights Trail website.
SOUTH DAKOTA: The Corn Palace
The walls of the Corn Palace in Mitchell are adorned with complex murals and art that’s all been made out of, you guessed it, corn. The design changes every year.
TENNESSEE: Parthenon in Centennial Park
Built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition — and then reconstructed between 1921 and 1930 — the Parthenon in Centennial Park is a full-sized replica of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Today, it’s open to the public as an art museum.
TEXAS: James Turrell’s Twilight Epiphany skyspace
Designed by renowned artist James Turrell, the “Twilight Epiphany” Skyspace in Houston is a performance space that makes you feel as though you’ve entered another dimension.
UTAH: Natural History Museum of Utah
The Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City looks like it could have been carved out of the landscape. It was designed by Todd Schliemann of Ennead Architects.
VERMONT: The Old Round Church
The Old Round Church in Richmond is technically a 16-sided polygon, but it’s still enough of a circle to lend credence to a rumor that it was built in that shape so that the Devil had no corners to hide in.
VIRGINIA: Dulles International Airport
If they’re done wrong, airports can be the most insufferable place to spend a few hours. But we have to admire Virginia’s Dulles International Airport, which almost looks like a futuristic aircraft itself.
WASHINGTON: Seattle Central Library
Forget the idea of a dusty old home for books nobody reads. The Seattle Central Library is a miracle of modern architecture.
WASHINGTON, DC: The United States Capitol
The United States Capitol is such a mainstay of nightly news and political pop culture that it’s easy to take for granted. It’s nice to step back once in a while and take in the grandeur and historical significance of this government building that reflects on America’s complicated past.
Construction on the Capitol began in September 1793, and much of the structure was built by enslaved workers working alongside free Black and white laborers, per the White House Historical Association. In 2012, a marker was added to the Capitol Visitor Center commemorating the unpaid labor of enslaved people who built the nation’s Capitol.
WEST VIRGINIA: The Palace of Gold
The Palace of Gold is a majestic memorial shrine located in the Hare Krishna community of New Vrindaban.
WISCONSIN: The Burke Brise Soleil
The most striking feature of the Milwaukee Art Museum is the Burke Brise Soleil, a towering sunscreen with a 217-foot wingspan. It folds and unfolds twice a day.
WYOMING: Smith Mansion
This wacky-looking building is in the middle of the remote Wapiti Valley. In 1971, architect Francis Lee Smith started building the structure by hand as his and his family’s home. After completing the first floor in 1973, he could not stop building. He died after falling from one of the balconies in 1992.
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