I was thinking about how bad our capitol building and mall are (as one does on a Tuesday) and got going on a rabbit hole of past capitol building/mall renovation proposals. Some of this may be old news to those here that are into this stuff, but I thought it would be an interesting thread to discuss past proposals and current ideas to rennovate/improve.
First, I found a great PDF of an Arizona Architect magazine from 1957, when there was a big proposal to revamp the capitol building and mall:
https://modernphoenix.net/aiaphoenix...t_Vol1_No1.pdf. It discusses the history of the capitol building and mall:
Original 19th Century full proposal, of which only a part was built:
West wing completed in 1939. Funny story about the cement for the steps disappearing:
1938 'skyscraper' plan:
1954 modern capitol proposal:
Approved 1957 plan that the House did not consider, which led to our current 'wings':
1957 mall plan:
Famously, as part of the 1957 renovation process, Frank Lloyd Wright submitted an unsolicited proposal:
The Frank Lloyd Wright foundation recently partnered with an architect to produce new renders of what it would have looked like (
https://www.designboom.com/art/frank...-11-28-2020/):
I also found a Wayback Machine copy of a 2005 ASU student project that summarizes post-1957 mall renovation proposals as part of introducing their own proposal (
https://web.archive.org/web/20090506...capitalmall/):
1969 capitol mall plan:
The ASU project also discusses 1973, 1987 and 1997 updates and revisions to the planning for the mall.
I personally would have loved the 1954 proposal. Overall though I'm reminded of a pithy line from a sci-fi novel I read: "Only fascists should make cities. Democrats never have a salient thesis."
Anyone here been sitting on a grand plan to revamp the capitol? Anyone think we'll see a new capitol building in our lifetimes?
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