The project may be ephemeral, but the designers approached the 2004 Ice Palace in Saint Paul with the same gusto as a building meant to stand the test of time. Volunteer designers from SLL/Leo A Daly, the Minneapolis office of Leo A Daly, designed this shimmering 36,000-square-foot palace for the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.

Saint Paul instituted its Winter Carnival in 1886 to showcase a city that is alive and vibrant, even in the dead of the Minnesota winter. This year’s theme, “A Legacy in Ice,” inspired the architect’s team to design a striking ice palace as the carnival’s focal point. Their design evokes myths and legends associated with the elements of fire, water, and ice as metaphors for the annual thaw and rebirth of the emerging spring.

It takes an (ice) village
On grounds covering two-and-one-half city blocks, the 2004 Ice Palace is the first to be built for the carnival in 12 years, and the first visitors can enter since 1941. The volunteer SLL/Leo A Daly team, led by Frank Anderson, AIA, includes four other architects, a student architect, a high school student, seven engineers, and additional IT and support staff.

The palace and its grounds are constructed of 27,000 500-pound blocks of ice carved from nearby Lake Phalen. The palace itself measures 240 feet long at the base, with the tallest of the five turrets towering 75 feet. Construction of the complex required 55,000 worker-hours and more than 3,000 volunteers.

Visitors enter the grounds through a main gate flanked by 20-foot-high ice turrets. A dramatically arched entrance provides entry into the beautifully illuminated ice palace itself. A fountain of ice and fire commands the courtyard, and just beyond, nine internally lighted ice thrones circle to form the majestic Ring of Thrones. A computer-generated light show every 90 minutes attempts “to recreate the aurora borealis, or northern lights, inside the Palace,” Anderson says. The palace grounds also include a refrigerated ice rink (last included as part of the 1938 palace) and an entertainment stage. A decorative, herringboned wall of ice surrounds the area.

But all good things . . .
The city expects more than 2 million people to visit the palace, boosted especially by the February 8 NHL All-Star Game at the Xcel Energy Center just across the street.

Alas, the end of the festivities will bring cranes for demolition and a lot of steam to melt the ice, with the resulting water disappearing through the sewer system. It’s all too fleeting, but there’s always next year!

—Tracy Ostroff

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