Minnesota State Capitol Mall
The Minnesota State Capitol Mall includes eighteen acres of green space. Over the years, monuments, and memorials, have been added to the mall.[1] The mall has been called Minnesota's Front lawn and is a place where the public has gathered for celebrations, to party, to demonstrate and protest, and to grieve.
1. Leif Erikson
2. Quadriga: Progress of the State
3. Judicial Plaza
4. Floyd B. Olson – Governor during depression years
5. John Johnson – 1st Governor born in state
6. Knute Nelson: 1st foreign born Governor
7. Hubert H. Humphrey
8. The Women’s Suffrage Memorial Garden
9. Charles Lindbergh: The Boy and the Man
10. Roy Wilkins Memorial
11. Laos Special Forces Memorial
12. MN Vietnam Memorial
13. Court of Honor
14. Korean War Veterans Memorial
15. MN Workers Memorial
16. Military Family Tribute
17. MN World War II Veterans Memorial
18. Fallen Firefighters Memorial
19. Monument to the Living
20. Promise of Youth
21. U.S.S. Ward Gun
22. The Peace Officers Memorial
23. Earthbound
24. Liberty Bell
A. Christopher Columbus Memorial (pedestal)
The mall is overseen by the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board (CAAPB), a small state agency consisting of twelve members, with responsibilities to preserve and enhance the dignity, beauty, and architectural integrity of the capitol, the buildings adjacent to it, the capitol grounds, and the capitol area.[2]
History
On March 15, 1894, the board engaged the St. Paul civil engineering and surveying firm of Fowble and Fitz to prepare a report with diagrams of the site of the third Minnesota State Capitol. The site was bounded by University Avenue on the north, Park to Wabasha Street to Central Avenue on the west and southwest, Central Avenue to Cedar Street on the southeast, and Cedar Street on the east to University Avenue.
In the beginning for the planning of the third State Capitol, a Capitol approach with surrounding grounds received little attention. The Board of State Capitol Commissioners, essentially prohibited development plans of the grounds in the 1895 architectural competition instructions.[3]
When the Minnesota State Capitol opened in 1905, instead of the vast open green space of the State Capitol Mall, lined with state office buildings, it overlooked shaped small patch of green space and an asymmetric jumble of streets lined with commercial and residential structures built between the 1870s and early 1900s.[4]
The architect of the Minnesota State Capitol Cass Gilbert continued to advocate for a grand capitol approach that would do justice to his building’s design until the end of his life, 30 years later.[5]
Gilbert’s capitol approach plan followed the Beaux-Arts precedents of the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition "White City" and the McMillan Plan for a park system in Washington, DC.
However, Minnesota legislators had little appetite in authorizing and appropriating the funds for the acquisition of nearby properties to implement Gilbert's grand vision.
Gilbert’s ideas were incorporated into two larger city plans for St. Paul, proposed in 1911 and in 1922. Both were promoted in part by local business interests, but neither plan was formally adopted.[6]
As time went on, the aging neighborhood surrounding the State Capitol, the blocks to the south, east, and west became increasingly deteriorated. In 1936 an article in Fortune magazine, accompanied by a watercolor illustration that depicted the capitol rising above the local slums, called "among the worst in the land."[7]
A variety of grand proposals for more suitable frontage for the State Capitol were presented throughout the years but it wasn’t until the end of World War II that city and state interests would finally align and a plan would take shape for the State Capitol Mall.
Designed by the landscape architecture firm of Morell and Nichols, the plan partially realized Gilbert’s vision of landscaped grand boulevards providing key approaches to the capitol but removed Gilbert's Capitol south approach from Seven Corners. Not having it in the plan would be easier for the legislature to approve because it required less property acquisition. Instead the plan included an axial pedestrian mall leading from the capitol steps and terminating at a “court of honor," north of the Veterans Service Building site.[5]
Funded by a $2 million state appropriation, the mall was planned to provide a grand setting for the State Capitol and for several new state buildings to be constructed in the future. The plan also anticipated a new “national defense” highway (today’s Interstate 94), then in the planning stages, extending through downtown St. Paul requiring the destruction of numerous structures for its right of way.[5]
Following approval of the plan, both the state commission and the City of St. Paul began to acquire property. More than 100 homes and buildings, including two churches, several apartment buildings, and “many sub-standard private homes” were condemned and then demolished to make room for the Capitol Mall and land for state buildings. Within five years, the neighborhood south of the Capitol was completely gone. [4][5]
The work was largely complete by 1955, leaving the State Capitol Mall with the overall form that still provides the setting for the Minnesota State Capitol.
Monuments
A list of monuments and memorials on and around the State Capitol Mall.
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