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The Northwest Architectural Archives holds dozens of lovely renderings, sketches and plans for St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Palaces designed by Clarence "Cap" Wigington in the 1930s and 1940s. The 2004 St. Paul (Mn) Winter Carnival Ice Palace is under construction at the edge of downtown St. Paul, and together with the 2004 Ice Palace web site, you can tour the predecessors to this new Ice Palace.
Courtesy of the Pemberton and Bohanon families, we bring you a very small selection of these wonderful images from our Archives. David Vassar Taylor writes in his biography of Wigington (Cap Wigington; An Architectural Legacy in Ice and Stone. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001*) about the Ice Palaces designed by Wigington:
"The sheer walls and zigzag countours of his ice palaces were paeans to modernism as Wigington understood it. But the walls met the sky with a dancing line, and the rhythm of the dance jumped from surface to surface on their undulating sides."
Clarence ("Cap") Wigington (1883-1967) was the first African-American registered architect to practice for any substantial length of time in Minnesota.
He may have been the first black municipal architect as well, having practiced in the City Architect's office of St. Paul (MN) for nearly three decades, from the late 1920s to the 1940s.
He is responsible for some of the landmark structures in the city, including the Highland Park Water Tower (1928),
the Harriet Island Pavilion (1941;now the Clarence W. Wigington Pavilion) and the Holman Field Administration Building (1939) for the St. Paul Municipal Airport.
His papers, called the Pemberton-Wigington Family Papers, include plans for these and over 100 other commissions.
[Click on images to enlarge]
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A preliminary sketch by C. W. Wigington for the 1940 St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Palace |
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Another preliminary sketch, this one for the 1947 Ice Pavilion for the St. Paul Winter Sports Carnival, as it was then called |
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A design for the 1940 St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Palace, to be erected in Como Park. |
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Drawn by C. W. Wigington, this is a design for the 1942 St. Paul Winter Carnival |
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Two sturdy-looking elevations from the proposed 1938 St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Palace |
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An unusually vivid illustration of a proposal for the 1947 St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Palace. |
*Quotation courtesy David Vassar Taylor; use of the images courtesy the Bohanon and Pemberton Families. The Northwest Architectural Archives acknowledges their gracious permission.
Please contact mssref@umn.edu about this site.
URL: http://special.lib.umn.edu//manuscripts/
Last updated: Monday, 12-January-2004