Page 12 - St. Paul, MN Central Station Design Guidelines

frame of the Romanesque building, maintaining
Figure 2.5 4th Street from Minnesota Street, facing east, ca. 1923 1910s, the new generation of Saint Paul office
8 central station block development and existing conditions
and the St. Paul Athletic Club (1918) at Cedar and
the building’s competitiveness with new office Fourth streets were also completed in the Beaux-Arts
construction. style.
By the turn of the century, reinforced concrete Between 1928 and 1937, Kellogg Boulevard was
structures were very popular with warehouse and constructed along the alignment of the 53-foot-wide
department store owners who required uninterrupted Third Street from Market to Jackson streets. The
floor areas. In 1908, Minneapolis engineer, Claude boulevard was planned as a backdrop for a new
Allen Porter Turner (known as C.A.P., 1869-1955), generation of civic and commercial buildings, and
patented a new structural form that allowed columns encompassed the new Robert Street Bridge (1925).
to carry slab floors, eliminating beams. By 1915, the These buildings would exemplify a new architectural
Twin Cities had the nation’s greatest concentration vocabulary encompassing the Art Deco and Moderne
of tall concrete frame buildings; this is likely due to styles, and include the Minnesota Building (1929) and
Turner’s presence coupled with the strong demand the 32-story First National Bank (1931), which face
for commercial and industrial structures. In the the Central Station block. At the same time, a new Art
Deco Saint Paul City Hall and Ramsey County Court
buildings utilized reinforced concrete construction House (1931) was completed at Wabasha Street and
covered by smooth-skinned terra cotta and brick, Kellogg Boulevard.
with limited ornamentation. These Commercial Style
buildings exhibited the tripartite exterior design for There was little infrastructure investment in downtown
tall buildings that divided them into a vertical column Saint Paul during the Depression and World War II.
with an articulated base, an uninterrupted shaft and The old Saint Paul City Hall and Ramsey County Court
a prominent capital. In 1915, the National German- House was demolished in 1933, and the block was
American Bank (1885) at Fourth and Robert streets landscaped as Victory Square. In 1944, the Central
was replaced with the 16-story, First Farmers and Business Development Committee was formed
Merchants Bank Building (1915, extant). The Beaux- to improve downtown Saint Paul. It hired planner
Arts Commercial Style office building is clad in glazed Raymond Loewy to modernize the commercial core,
white brick and features the tripartite design. The but lacked implementation funds.
Saint Paul Hotel (1910) at St. Peter and Fifth streets