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. 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.
The mall is overseen by the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board, 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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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, then in the planning stages, extending through downtown St. Paul requiring the destruction of numerous structures for its right of way.
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.
The erection of the Veterans Service Building, planned as a "living tribute", at the end of the mall facing the Capitol after World War II began another round of memorials.
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.
In 1986 David Mayernik and Thomas N. Rajkovich entered an international competition to design the Capitol Grounds. They were only three years out of architecture school, but it was an open call, meaning no license was required. Theirs was one of five entries selected to go on to the second phase, for which they needed a license, so they associated with HGA of Minneapolis. They won the final phase that summer from a jury that included architects Demetri Porphyrios and Léon Krier, under governor Rudy Perpich. They were subsequently engaged by MnDoT to redesign the bridges over I94 that connected the capitol with downtown. The Capitol Grounds project was not realized.

Monuments

A list of monuments and memorials on and around the State Capitol Mall.

Leif Erikson

is thought to have been the first known European to have set foot on continental North America in 1000 A.D. The Leif Erikson Monument Association formed with the purpose of erecting a memorial to Leif Erikson on a nearby site and was organized partially in response to the Mall's Columbus memorial which was dedicated in 1931. Norwegian American sculptor John Karl Daniels created a model of the statue in 1937. It wasn't until May 27, 1947 construction was started on the memorial site and the dedication occurred on October 9, 1949 part of a Leif Erikson Day celebration during the Minnesota Territorial Centennial of 1949. The dedication of the thirteen foot bronze figure was attended by 3,000 - 5,000 people. The memorial bears the title "Discoverer of America" on its pedestal. In 2015, legislation was introduced in the Minnesota House of Representatives to change the engraving to read "Leif Erikson Landed in America, 1000 A.D.." The bill did not pass.
  • Sculptor: John Karl Daniels
  • Dedicated: October 9, 1949.

    Quadriga "Progress of the State"

The Quadriga is an allegorical sculpture, created in 1906 by Daniel Chester French along with Edward Potter, a noted sculptor of animals, and is at the base of the Minnesota State Capitol's dome. Both artists had collaborated on the Columbus Quadriga, at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago on which the Minnesota quadriga is based. The charioteer represents the state's drive for progress and prosperity. The four horses represent the classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water and the two women, representing industry and agriculture hold their reins symbolizing control the forces of nature. The pineapples emerging from the hub of the chariot wheels are a symbol of hospitality. Collectively, they represent civilization suggesting the future progress of the state of Minnesota.
  • Sculptors:Daniel Chester French and Edward Potter
  • Created: 1906

    Judicial Center Plaza

Judicial Center Plaza is a public space with abstract pieces of granite scattered about the yard representing Greek ruins. The plaza consists of benches, columns, fixtures, a small amphitheater and a memorial wall.
  • Sculptor: Richard Fleischner
  • Title: Untitled
  • Media: Granite, bronze and stone
  • Created: 1990

    Floyd B. Olson Memorial

was the Minnesota governor from 1931 to 1936. As a leader of the Farmer-Labor Party he was the first of its members to win the office of governor. As Minnesota's first Farmer-Labor Party governor, Olson pursued an activist agenda aimed at easing the impact of the Great Depression. Olson was elected to a 3rd term as governor in 1934. But his term was cut short when he of stomach cancer on August 22, 1936 at the age of 44.
  • Sculptor: Carlo Brioschi and Amerigo Brioschi
  • Dedicated: 1958

    John Johnson Memorial

This was the first monument on the mall. John Albert Johnson Was elected to serve as governor in 1905 and died while in office suddenly on September 21, 1909, at age 48 in Rochester, Minnesota following surgery. Johnson was the first Minnesota native-born governor. At the 1908 Democratic Convention Johnson also was the first Minnesota governor to seek the presidential nomination but lost to William Jennings Bryan. The bronzes on the pedestal reflect the first major industries in Minnesota: agriculture, iron mining, lumbering and manufacturing.
was born in Evanger, Voss, Norway, on February 2, 1843. He is Minnesota's first foreign-born governor. During the American Civil War he served in the 4th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. Nelson was governor of Minnesota from January 4, 1893, to January 31, 1895. He resigned from the governorship in 1895 to successfully run for US Senate. He died in office, April 28, 1923, during his 5th senatorial term. The pedestal's bronze figures show him with his Norwegian mother as a child and as a soldier in the U.S. Civil War. This was the first of three sculptures on the mall done by artist John Karl Daniels.
  • Sculptor: John Karl Daniels
  • Dedicated: 1928

    Hubert H. Humphrey Memorial

was the Mayor of Minneapolis from 1945 to 1948, where he established the city's fair-employment commission and challenged the city's ingrained discrimination against Jews. In 1948 he is elected to the U.S. Senate serving three consecutive Senate terms. At the 1948 Democratic National Convention his address on civil rights won broad liberal acclaim and caused a walkout by Southern segregationist delegates. He was selected by President Lyndon Johnson as his running mate, and was elected vice-president in November 1964 and served from 1965 to 1969. In 1968 at Democratic National Convention Humphrey won his party's nomination for the Democratic candidate for President. In the general election, he lost narrowly to Richard Nixon. Humphrey is reelected to the Senate in 1971 and service until his death while in office in 1978. Near the end of his career, a poll of one thousand congressional staff named him the most effective U.S. senator of the previous fifty years.
  • Sculptors: Jeff Koh Varilla and Anna Koh Varilla
  • Site Design: Jeff Martin, DSU
  • Dedicated: August 4, 2012