Kirsti Marohn

St. Cloud Times

ST. PAUL — It’s taken decades of planning, three years of construction and hundreds of laborers working thousands of hours.

The newly refurbished Minnesota State Capitol is set to reopen to the public Jan. 3 after undergoing the first major preservation effort since it opened in 1905.

Some of the changes will be clearly visible to visitors who head to the historic St. Paul building next year for a tour, to visit state lawmakers or attend a rally or a committee hearing.

But much of the project is less obvious: upgraded infrastructure and repairs to the inside and outside of the 111-year-old building that was literally crumbling away.

The Capitol normally has about 120,000 visitors a year, including 1,300 school tours. But it’s been largely off-limits to visitors during the renovation. Both the House and Senate will meet in session at the Capitol when the 2017 session begins Jan. 3.

Crews are working round the clock to finish last-minute work. However, a few areas will remain closed as construction continues. A grand opening of the completed building won’t be held until August.

Still, the majority of the renovation is complete. Former offices have been converted to public gathering spaces. Long-covered skylights have been opened to let in more light. Historic murals have been restored.

The basement — once full of long, dark tunnels with cement walls and overhanging wires — is now a vibrant space with natural stone walls, tile floors and graceful archways. Next to the refurbished offices of the Capitol press corps is a high-tech room wired for news conferences.

The building’s original century-old plumbing system has been updated. Aged mechanical and electrical systems were replaced, as was the roof. The crumbling stone and deteriorating marble exterior were repaired.

The original cost of the building was $4.5 million. The cost of the restoration is about $310 million.

The project's goals included making safety improvements such as adding stairwells and sprinklers, adding more elevators and restrooms and increasing accessibility for people with disabilities, said Curt Yoakum, a spokesman for the state Department of Administration.

Workers repaired parts of walls and the roof damaged by water infiltration. They also repaired the decorative marble, which had deteriorated so much in some places that it posed a safety hazard to visitors.

"We literally had the marble falling off the building," Yoakum said.

When it opened, the Minnesota Capitol was immediately hailed throughout the country as one of the nation’s grandest and most beautiful public buildings, according to the state historical society.

The State Capitol Preservation Commission sought to preserve the original vision of architect Cass Gilbert, who modeled his design after the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

An estimated 35,000 pieces of marble were marked and cataloged as part of the restoration. About 800 tons of new white marble were quarried from Pickens County, Georgia, the same county where the original marble came from.

Workers also replaced all of the windows in the building with new ones that are historic reproductions. They also reclaimed some skylights that had been covered by drop ceilings, flooding some hearing rooms with natural light.

Murals on the Capitol's rotunda dome and throughout the building were preserved, and about 40 works of art were removed for protection and stored during the restoration.

Pointing to the lofty rotunda ceiling, Yoakum noted how the colors have been returned to their original vibrancy.

"What you don't see up there is all the plaster damage that had been up there for so many years," he said.

The Capitol art sparked some controversy when Gov. Mark Dayton suggested some of the Civil War paintings that adorn the governor’s offices be removed.

The Minnesota Historical Society executive council voted to keep the Civil War paintings. But two other paintings from the governor's reception room that were deemed historically inaccurate and insulting will be removed.

Guided tours of the Capitol will resume Jan. 3. For more information, go to www.mnhs.org/capitol.

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