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 (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.

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.