After Olympia became capital city of the Washington Territory in 1853, the city's founder, Edmund Sylvester, gave the legislature of land upon which to build the capitol, located on a hill overlooking what is now known as Capitol Lake. A two-story wood-frame building was constructed on the site, where the legislature met starting in 1854. When President Benjamin Harrison approved Washington's state constitution in 1889, he donated of federal lands to the state with the stipulation that income from the lands was to be used solely for construction of the state capitol.