Johnson, Norman J., Washington’s Audacious State Capitol and Its Builders. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988: 35-37

As you can see, these images clearly show that both designers assumed that the isthmus would be built-out. I say assumed because the book clearly states that the isthmus was not part of the scope of the campus design project – and this was true even for the Olmstead’s project, which was meant to be only landscape design in scope.

So, in all fairness, we do not think this completely answers the question of exactly how the designers would have designed the isthmus; it just shows that they did not assume it would be a park – they assumed it would be built out. In fact, the Olmstead rendering shows a diagonal park corridor between the campus and the edge of the core of downtown (today’s Legion and Capitol, perhaps?), as well as a narrow view corridor through the built-out isthmus, similar to OLY 2012’s vision. It was noted by Johnson, however, that this proposal was deemed unfeasible by the state campus commission because it would have been too costly for the state to buy the land from the private sector that would have made up the corridors. (An important practical reality in mind when debating what to do with the isthmus). Read the rest of this entry »