CAPITOL
BUILDING MEMORIAL
ST. THOMAS, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS
PROJECT STATUS | UNBUILT
PROJECT BACKGROUND
VA was hired to prepare design and construction documents for the rehabilitation of the Capitol Building Grounds. The site improvements included the repositioning of cannons and the reinterpretation of the Battery and Transfer Monument on the waterfront, which commemorates the 1917 transfer of the Danish West Indies ownership of the islands from the Kingdom of Denmark to the US. The program was to facilitate the Transfer Day formal ceremony with a memorial wall and esplanade, creating a decorous space for residents and tourists interested in the history of the Virgin Islands.
EXISTING CONDITIONS
A total infrastructural, hardscape, lighting, and landscape design upgrade was needed to dignify the historical site. There were some stately old mahogany trees, though partially damaged by storms with roots exposed, breaking up the paving surrounding them. Air conditioning chillers and other equipment had been placed over the years in plain sight along the main facade and in open gutters. Parking spaces along the façade and on the waterfront, on an embankment made by filling the shoreline, obstructed the cannons, transfer, and ocean views, as well as being an environmental hazard for marine life.
PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL
Our design proposed low grassy embankments and free-standing or buttressed walls as a metaphor of the battery site and to tie the site to the nearby 17C Fort Christian. Several memorials and historic markers were included, with a ceremonial pedestrian approach with ADA ramps, rampons and steps that also provided access to the main building hosting the VI Legislature. All parking lots were removed from the site to dignify the last piece of undeveloped historical waterfront left on the island, except for temporary parking for the senators in a designated area by markers on paving.
AFTERWARD
A full set of construction documents was prepared, of which a few pages are shown here. As with many of our public or institutional projects in the islands, nothing was built. For years, the community’s argument continued that the Capitol’s Battery and Transfer site should be surrounded, or not surrounded, by a four-lane highway to connect to the expansion of Veterans’ Drive in front of Charlotte Amalie. The filling in of the harbor in front of the Capitol was, to some people, a less damaging trade-off to rejoining the original historical connection between the Capitol site and the Fort, without the highway cutting between them. Most likely, this version is the one going to be built.
