The Hennepin County Government Center was built in 1974 by John Carl Warneke and Associates. He had designed the Honolulu State House and the JFK Memorial. Warneke had a grand vision of the gravitas of government, and wanted the new county court house to hold its own with Long and Kees spectacular City Hall/Courthouse across 5th Street. He also wanted it to be the anchor point in a civic square which in turn reestablished a focus for the whole downtown area...a focus once imagined in the early years of the 20th century but was lost to the vicissitudes of aimless development.
The interior of the court house has a 350 foot high ceiling, which was the highest in the Western Hemisphere when it was built. The building is comprised of two towers joined by a set of magnificent glass panes that are 13' on a side, and which had to be custom made and then completely redone when the seals on the double panes didn't stand up to the extremes of Minnesota weather.
These days we can look back on the ambition of local politicians to house their doings in a setting that recalls the grandeur of great governments, great dreams. I watch people scurry through the Public Service Level, their heads bent and eyes glued to their phones, and wonder if we will ever elevate the practice of government to such levels implied by this magnificent atrium. I hope so. I bet my life and career on the prospect of a civil service that was in fact a noble calling, not a mean one, and not a calling at odds with the very citizenship that it serves.
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