Minnesota State Capitol 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.

[2] 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 Board of State Capitol Commissioners, essentially prohibited development plans of the grounds in the 1895 architectural competition instructions.

However, Minnesota legislators had little appetite in authorizing and appropriating the funds for the acquisition of nearby properties to implement Gilbert's grand vision.

[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".

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.

[4][5] 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.

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.

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.

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.

[11] Judicial Center Plaza is a public space with abstract pieces of granite scattered about the yard representing Greek ruins.

As Minnesota's first Farmer-Labor Party governor, Olson pursued an activist agenda aimed at easing the impact of the Great Depression.

[15] 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.

At the 1908 Democratic Convention Johnson also was the first Minnesota governor to seek the presidential nomination but lost to William Jennings Bryan.

At the 1948 Democratic National Convention his address on civil rights won broad liberal acclaim and caused a walkout by Southern segregationist delegates.

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.

The bronze statue memorializes the Minnesota aviator Charles A. Lindbergh who completed the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight, flying his plane, Spirit of St. Louis from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France.

While most reactions to the sculpture were positive, some were concerned with its place of honor in light of Lindbergh's antisemitic comments leading up to World War II.

[22] The Memorial honors and recognizes the service and sacrifice Hmong and Lao veterans who served and fought for the U.S. in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

A limestone house facade introduces representation of theme of homecoming while pools, streams, and native Minnesota trees and shrubs further adds to that sense.

The table top features a polished surface and light shines though holes to form the Northern hemisphere constellations.

Story Stones represents connections between soldiers deployed for active military duty and their loved ones at home through the correspondence of letters from the American Civil War to the present sent between them.

-1945 Stearns (county)[25] The memorial features ten glass panels etched with text and scenes from World War II, within a plaza area at the foot of a mall leading to the front entrance to the Capitol.

Ward earned an historic chapter in military history when on December 7, 1941, it caused the first American-caused casualties in the defense of the US in the Second World War, sinking an enemy Japanese Ko-hyoteki-class, two-man midget submarine off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

On June 10, 2020 members of the American Indian Movement tore down the 1931 Christopher Columbus statue located across from the Minnesota Judicial Center.