The Capitol Approach (Public Dreams, Personal Ambitions, and the Unmaking of St. Paul)

A legendary architect’s vision for the grounds in front of the state capitol inspired a city planner to devote his career to making it happen. But bringing the dream to life exacted a heavy toll, displacing residents and destroying a reputation. This gripping tale reveals the human cost of grand ambitions.

In The Capitol Approach urbanist Ethan Osten examines civic planning in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Famed architect Cass Gilbert envisioned a beautiful park and parkway system in front of the Minnesota State Capitol building. For sixty years, city planner George H. Herrold idealistically sought to bring Gilbert’s dream to life. Along the way a motley crew of entrenched political machines, labor organizers, civic and religious reformers, and an emerging guild of civil servants influenced the course of the city’s history and set the stage for the dream’s partial fulfillment. 

Herrold added ideas of his own to Gilbert’s dream. He sacrificed his reputation for the cause. Finally, he achieved success by subordinating his own will to the Capitol Approach. In a tale rife with secrets and betrayals, compromise and qualification, altruism and idealism, Herrold ultimately discovered that achieving a worthwhile goal could require sacrificing everything else he held dear.

The Capitol Approach is a case study of how civic plans and moral reform efforts, once embedded in institutions, can outlive and outgrow the reasoning that produced them, and how the planners, politicians, and citizens who pursue them can be undone by their own success.