The worst winter in decades has elevated Minnesota’s reputation for toughness, albeit of a polite, unassuming, occasionally passive-aggressive variety.
Nevertheless, Charlie Hall, King Boreas XLVII, believes a little more could be done to pay homage to Old Man Winter and St. Paul’s unique embrace of our relentless weather.
He’s done it before — in ice and granite. Hall chaired the 1986 Winter Carnival Committee, which built a giant ice palace by Lake Phalen. Assembled with the help of 1,000 volunteers, many of them represented by trade unions, the 128-foot-tall spectacle drew hundreds of thousands of visitors from miles around to celebrate the carnival’s 100-year anniversary.
A sizable ice palace hadn’t been seen since 1940. This one had 10,000 blocks of ice. History was restored.
By some estimates, the palace drew 2 million visitors during its seven-week building phase and the two weeks of the actual carnival. But Hall wasn’t finished. Two years later, he repeated his ice palace feat at Harriet Island near downtown, again drawing visitors from far and wide.
What happened in the year between remains the biggest regret of Hall’s unofficial career as a Winter Carnival booster, if not of his 83 years on Earth. His 1986 ice palace was so popular, Hall built it again — this time in granite, and much smaller.
The 18-foot-tall monument to St. Paul’s annual Winter Carnival celebration cost him $60,000 from his own pocket in a leap of faith that was quickly paid back by 12 businesses, which chipped in $5,000 apiece.
“I traveled all over the United States, got the granite, got the templates done in North Carolina, and the granite back east, and I actually planted all the plants around the thing,” Hall recalled Wednesday.
The granite landmark arrived from an East Coast manufacturer in four ready-to-assemble pieces, and city officials seemed to smile on the campaign. Only one question remained.
“Not knowing any better, they said, ‘Where would you like it?’ ” Hall said. “The mayor at that time, George Latimer, said let’s just put it where the ice palace was in Phalen Park.”
Hall, to his never-ending chagrin, said yes to the location.
He was wrong.
His monument now stands more or less forgotten in Phalen Park, seen by passing golfers and not many others. The street had been connected to U.S. 61 for the Winter Carnival of 1986 but became a dead-end road again soon after.
“They closed it off again as soon as we were done,” Hall said. “None of us thought that no one is going to come see it later on. We didn’t know any better.”
In an open letter this month to the St. Paul City Council, the mayor’s office, the public and the media, Hall writes of his ice-palace monument: “Since 1987, this beautiful and majestic ice-palace monument has stood unseen in an area of Phalen Park that has zero new traffic.”
Hall was Winter Carnival king in 1983, and his wife, Dorothy Furlong, played queen in 1955. The two were married at the Winter Carnival in 2011, drawing a flattering wedding article from the New York Times.
Hall said he’d like to see the monument moved somewhere befitting royalty before he gets too old to see his worst decision undone. Kellogg Boulevard in downtown St. Paul would be a better resting place, he figures.
“All I’m trying to do is say, ‘Look, this is a boon for downtown St. Paul,’ ” he said. “It’s going to bring a lot of people to see it.”
Hall met with the St. Paul Parks and Recreation Department twice last year to pitch his proposal, which has gained little traction at City Hall. He believes he can rally the surviving members of the 1986 ice-palace committee to pay for its relocation, a new foundation, and lighting fixtures and shrubbery.
It would be a testament to St. Paul winters gone by and to the many St. Paul winters to come. While the annual Winter Carnival lives on, the ice-palace tradition took a tumble in the early 1990s, a victim of overspending.
It became a sporadic attraction soon after. Spanning 16,000 blocks of ice, the last ice palace was built in 2004 next to the Xcel Energy Center. Since then, several carnivals have featured smaller mazes made of ice.
Winter in St. Paul might not be a war zone, but Hall points out that the lettering on his granite monument is the same size and variety as that of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It says: “A labor of love.”
Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.
Copyright 2014 Pioneer Press.
