History

Construction proceeded during the Great Depression, when falling prices kept the project under budget while actually raising its quality above specification. The architects drew from Eliel Saarinen’s influential 1922 submission for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition — a design that had shown American architects a way to organize tall building setbacks that was neither Gothic nor Classical but purely geometric and vertical. Thomas Ellerbe and Holabird & Root translated that influence into a Minnesotan civic structure: restrained, smooth, authoritative, and scaled to Saint Paul’s river-bluff downtown rather than to Chicago’s Loop.

The sculpture program was executed by several major figures. Lee Lawrie — who had worked on the Nebraska State Capitol and the entrance sculptures for 30 Rockefeller Plaza — carved the relief sculptures above the Fourth Street entrance and flanking the Kellogg Boulevard entrance. In 1936, the centerpiece of Memorial Hall arrived: the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles delivered a 60-ton, 38-foot-tall figure carved in white onyx, originally titled “Indian God of Peace” and later renamed “Vision of Peace.” The piece rotates slowly, presenting its geometry differently throughout the day. Additional notable features include woodwork from 23 different species of wood, five types of imported marble, murals by John W. Norton, and six bronze elevator doors by Albert Stewart.