From Deseret News archives:

Capitol idea

Architects revive original landscape plans but give them a modern twist

Published: Friday, Aug. 6, 2004 12:12 a.m. MDT
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One difference was apparent as soon as the Capitol was completed, in 1916: Kletting planned for statuary on the outside of the Capitol, but the building came in over budget, so the statues never were commissioned. And another little problem that planners couldn't have foreseen: Over the years a lot of Capitol Hill got paved for parking lots.

The new design will see parking go underground. Pedestrian walkways will be reinstated. On the east side of the grounds, a viewing balcony will extend out over Memory Grove, linking that green space with the green space around the Capitol.

Allen Roberts, with the local architecture firm of Cooper/Roberts, also worked on the historic structures report, under the supervision of the Capitol Restoration Board. In 1999, before landscape architects started to draw the current site plan, Roberts and his assistants scoured the state archives and came up with 248 pages of Kletting's original drawings, including his site plan. Then Roberts got hold of the Olmsted Foundation and got copies of John Olmsted's first design of the Utah State Capitol grounds.

Roberts said Olmsted's design may have influenced Kletting but that Kletting was a great architect in his own right. Kletting had been born in Germany and had also studied and been influenced by the classical parks of Europe.

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Comparing Kletting's design to Olmsted's shows that Kletting's design is for a narrower site. Some elements, such as curved walkways, can be found in both men's work. Roberts reviewed the drawings before telling the Deseret Morning News that it was Kletting, not Olmsted, who envisioned three buildings to the north of the Capitol, forming a square with a plaza in the center.

That plaza has recently been completed. With the addition of the new House and Senate office buildings to the already existing state office building, the plaza is framed on all four sides, pretty much as Kletting imagined it.

The first two plans were the work of two individuals, but the most recent plan is definitely a group effort. A local architect, Paul Brown, had a lot to do with the final design, but the way Roberts describes the process, "We met every week with Dave Hart (Capitol architect) and the Capitol Preservation Board and Jacobsen Construction, so you had a whole bunch of people all kind of developing this together." Roberts said the final result is much closer to Kletting's plan than to Olmsted's.

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As part of $200 million, four-year renovation, landscapers will redesign the Utah State Capitol grounds.

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