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Illinois Issues
Archive2001-Present: Scroll Down or Use Search1975-2001: Click Here

Mixed Message: What impression of the capital city does Springfield want to convey?

Springfield, IL
Diana L.C. Nelson

The steel skeleton rising at the northeast edge of downtown is motivating Springfield leaders to think about how they want to present their city to visitors who come to see Abraham Lincoln’s hometown and the seat of Illinois government.

They don’t have much time to hone this belated message. A year from now, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, which will house 46,000 items from this state’s Lincoln collection, is scheduled to open. A year after that, an accompanying museum is slated to offer multimedia presentations and walk-through exhibits of Lincoln’s life. The estimated cost of the entire project is $115 million in local, state and federal dollars. That adds up to a major political coup — years in the making — and an urban planning challenge for this staid central Illinois town of some 100,000 residents. 

The complex will dominate and define the area where Lincoln rose from prairie lawyer to president. Three downtown blocks will be dedicated to the project, which is expected to draw at least 500,000 visitors a year. Those who look southwest from the new library and museum will see the nearby maroon-and-cream rotunda of the Old State Capitol. Telescoped on the skyline behind it, they’ll see the silver-topped dome of the current Statehouse. These monuments define the landscape of Lincoln’s hometown. They also frame a visitor’s understanding of the state and its legacy. This city is, after all, where Lincoln spent most of his adult life and rose to national prominence. And Springfield has served as the stage for Illinois politics for more than a century and a half.

But the addition of a marquee attraction means city leaders face a question they haven’t examined thoroughly since the 1920s: What impression do they want to leave on the tourists, lobbyists and government officials who will come here? Everyone, it seems, has a different idea. The architect of the library and museum envisions wide-open spaces that would link sites of historical importance. Downtown merchants want to see tourists frequenting street-level restaurants and shops. Residents who live above those businesses foresee the restoration of a cityscape more akin to the Springfield Lincoln knew.

The heart of the city resembles none of these visions, thanks to decades of short-sighted development. In truth, Springfield has no overarching vision at all. It shows. Dilapidated buildings and asphalt lots gobble up nearly entire city blocks. Storefronts stand empty, sometimes for years. Many structures are out of scale and out of place. Buildings constructed of terra cotta, steel and glass, limestone, brick or concrete line the streets, with little acknowledgement of their surroundings.

And that’s just the downtown. 

To the west, the state government campus is separated from the historic area by railroad tracks and three blocks of what Springfield preservation developer Carolyn Oxtoby calls “very underdeveloped” buildings. And the Capitol Complex sends a mixed message as well. It includes the 361-foot-tall Statehouse, a 19th century monument dominated by dozens of smooth columns topped with leafy Corinthian capitals. Across the street, draping garlands adorn the windows of the Supreme Court Building, while sculptures of such mythic figures as Lady Justice grace the outside of the beaux arts courthouse.

Some state buildings in the complex pick up on those classical themes, but others seem glaringly out of place with exteriors of glass and metal that lack reference to the buildings around them. Furthermore, the complex is besieged by surface lots on three sides, while a railroad viaduct obstructs the approach to the Capitol on the fourth.

The 1950s-era Stratton, a building with a layered exterior of glass and stone immediately to the west of the Capitol, later offended then-Secretary of State Jim Edgar so much that he studied the possibility of erecting a stone facade over it. The cost for that project proved too prohibitive. Nevertheless, Edgar says he was “emphatic” that the state library, which opened in 1990 across the street from the Capitol to the east, should be a classical building. “Maybe it was because I was a history major, a Republican and a traditionalist,” Edgar says. Whatever the reasons, Edgar says he insisted on the classic style even when others, including then-Gov. 

Jim Thompson, suggested something more modern.

Evoking the themes of Greek and Roman architecture at the Capitol Complex enhances the image of the state, Edgar contends. “It definitely adds a lot to the appearance as a symbol of the state. It looks like something people can be proud of.”

What about the rest of Springfield? Lincoln library and museum architect Gyo Obata says the problems extend well beyond the most high-profile areas of the city. He has repeatedly said the entryways to downtown from the Interstate need work. Most Springfield entry points, he notes, require visitors to pass through some of the city’s more blighted areas or through commercial areas lined with blaring billboards and poorly designed strip malls.

To their credit, local officials are motivated to consider these issues. 

Several groups, including the American Institute of Architects, are now assessing the scope of these challenges, at least in part because of conflicts over how best to integrate the presidential library with the rest of downtown. But city officials acknowledged the need for better planning even before those conflicts erupted. 

A recent mayoral commission outlined what would be required to transform Springfield into a “presidential-class city.” It emphasized the need for foresight and cohesion. “Planning can help Springfield move from a time where decisions were made without a larger context or because they have always been made a certain way,” the Strategy 2020 commission concluded. The results of decisions made “without a larger context” are all too visible.

But improvements already are under way. Barb Malany, the owner of a downtown flower shop and president of Downtown Springfield Inc., says one of the most successful steps was a joint effort by business owners and the city to improve the streetscape, the area between buildings and the streets. Cast-iron streetlights, benches and cobblestone now line several blocks in the heart of the city. Small touches, Malany says, can go a long way in bringing the area together. “I’m not sure the entire downtown has to match, but we can give it certain aspects that give it a certain cohesiveness.” 

The benefits of these changes are evident along Sixth Street, the heart of downtown in the capital city. During lunch hour, pedestrians flow in and out of restaurants located in beautifully restored buildings that evoke the character of the city before the beginning of the 20th century. If they venture north, visitors will pass a pedestrian plaza, completed last year, before approaching the Old State Capitol. At the intersection of that plaza and Sixth Street is Lincoln’s former law office, a popular destination.

Of course, the Old State Capitol is where Lincoln served as a state lawmaker, where he argued before the Illinois Supreme Court and where he delivered his “House Divided” speech. The building is set back from the street on a landscaped lawn. That open space creates a departure from the buildings surrounding it, which are all flush with the sidewalk. 

The original plats for Springfield show this square at the center of the new city. The courthouse was located there. When Springfield became the state capital, with an assist from Lincoln, it became the site of the Capitol. Thirty years ago, the state completely renovated the structure, spurring a renewed interest in downtown.

But immediately north of that square is an area that is at the center of a current heated controversy. Obata, the architect who designed the library complex, suggests razing the entire block between the Old State Capitol and Union Station to the north to create a Washington, D.C.-type mall that will tie these historic sites. Union Station, built in 1898, was designed by Francis Bacon, the older brother of Henry Bacon, who designed the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the Mall in Washington, D.C. It will serve in any event as the visitors center for the library and museum.

Last May, Illinois House Minority Leader Lee Daniels successfully pushed for $20 million in state funds to create the open vista, prompting a backlash from historic preservationists.

Historically significant buildings now sit on that would-be quadrangle. Further, clearing the block, some argue, would fundamentally change the nature of the square surrounding the Old State Capitol for the first time since the city was incorporated in 1832.

“If you take out the north wall, you make it a new city. This is not a museum setting, but the feel of the city was for the Old State Capitol to be surrounded,” argues Oxtoby, who bought a building on the north edge of the square six years ago to prevent it from being demolished.

Facing the Old State Capitol are four small buildings, two of which are on the National Register of Historic Places. Next to them stands a five-story bank drawn up by the same architecture firm that designed the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Building. The outside of the bank is deliberately plain, a hulk of red, polished granite with bronzed glass windows. 

In response to these new developments, local leaders hired an architecture firm to consider a host of options for the vista or to propose other ideas on ways to spend the state grant. Those options include razing the entire block, demolishing only the bank that dominates the block, moving the historically significant buildings or just leaving them. The Massachusetts firm, Sasaki Associates Inc., is expected to report back to the civic panel by the end of the year. Sasaki has conducted similar work on the Indiana Capitol Complex, on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois.

Meanwhile, the American Institute of Architects announced in October that it had selected Springfield as one of the cities it will evaluate. The association will send its experts in economic revitalization, historic preservation, urban planning, transportation and, of course, architecture to study the downtown once Sasaki completes its initial work. The AIA team will issue a “mini comprehensive plan,” says Springfield city planner Jeremy Lochirco. 

Obata, one of the founders of the architectural firm Hellmuth, Obata & Kassebaum, drew on disparate parts of the larger Springfield area for his design palate. Last month, he told the Illinois chapter of the AIA, which has its offices in the bank he proposes to raze, that he looked all over the city for inspiration. He cited both capitols, the Roman Catholic cathedral and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dana-Thomas House.

For example, he employs cylindrical shafts along the outside of both buildings. They are designed to resonate with the columns at the entryways and along the rotunda of the Old State Capitol, as well as the dominant neoclassical architecture of the Capitol Complex. But the limestone columns have been stripped of their fluted sides, capitals and much of their context, such as domes or entablatures, that give the motif its staying power. They do, however, match large, concrete columns outside another bank to the east of the Old State Capitol, which will have the effect of lining the better part of three blocks along Sixth Street with cylindrical shafts.

The design of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum does little on its own to evoke the memory of its namesake. Thus, much will depend on the context of the complex, which is to say that much will depend on the overall impression Springfield wants to convey.

The Strategy 2020 commission, which made suggestions for ways Springfield could be a “presidential-class” city, said attaining that goal would require a new approach to city planning. “Great cities do not just occur fortuitously,” the panel wrote. “They have planned their greatness and aggressively implemented their plans. The leaders of great cities have demonstrated their foresight and their citizens have supported them.” 

 


Daniel C. Vock is the Statehouse bureau chief for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. His most recent piece forIllinois Issues, about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, appeared in September.

Illinois Issues, December 2001

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