Staring out from the middle of the St. Thomas arches, holding a quill and stack of papers, is the statue of a man who needs no introduction.
Elsewhere on campus, he’s all but inescapable. Lamp posts, golf carts and water bottles — even gigantic white letters wheeled out onto the quad every once in a blue moon — all bear his name. If there were ever any person who even weather-weary campus pedestrians could recognize in a heartbeat, it would be St. Thomas Aquinas.
Yet for all the notoriety of the stony saint, the identity of the artist behind the nearly 80-year-old sculpture has remained unknown, posing university Archivist and Head of Special Collections Ann Kenne with the challenge of piecing together how the work fits into the campus’ broader architectural history.
“You see the symbol; everybody knows about the arches,” Kenne said. “… Tying the statue into other elements within the university, other symbols we have in the university, makes that full circle.”
The archives’ usual primary sources for locating such information — like news coverage of the statue or formal documentation of the artist’s commission — have found nothing, Kenne said.
Still, she has theories derived from less obvious conclusions: Kenne said other works on campus, like the depictions of athletes on the exterior of O’Shaughnessy Stadium and the Our Lady, Queen of Peace statue behind the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas bear similarities to the Aquinas statue. Both the stadium and chapel pieces were done by Brioschi-Minuti Co. in St. Paul, which leads Kenne to believe that the arches sculpture was the work of sculptor Amerigo Brioschi.
Victoria Young, a St. Thomas professor of modern architectural history, said that students’ research in her graduate seminar has reached a similar conclusion — yet one that also lacks the “smoking gun” concrete documentation.
The proof of Brioschi’s authorship may lie at the Minnesota History Center, according to Kenne. The center houses a collection of the artist’s materials, which Kenne hopes will put the question of the sculptor’s identity to rest. Among Brioschi-Minuti’s other widely-known works is the statue of Christopher Columbus that was displayed outside the state capital in St. Paul — the same statue that was prolifically torn down by protesters in June of 2020.
What historians do have records of, though, are the plans used to build the arches and the John Roach Center to which they connected the preexisting Aquinas Hall. While plans to build had been in motion before World War II, Young said that the arches’ construction later that decade informed when the relief sculpture — a sculpture built into the side of a building — of Aquinas was installed.
The architectural plans indicate a spot in the wall for an unspecified sculpture by an unspecified artist that would have likely been installed shortly after the arches, Young said.
“We’ve got a window of time when we know this thing goes in,” Young said. “It’s somewhere between ‘46 and ‘50, and my guess is it’s ‘47.”
Young said that the plans for the arches’ construction date back further, though.
In the late 1920s, Young said, the university had fallen into hard times as buildings built in the late 19th century were beginning to crumble, and new growth only accentuated the financial woes created by unpaid tuition bills.
To clean up this “huge mess,” Young said that university leadership called upon the Notre Dame Congregation of the Holy Cross, a religious order known for fixing problems on college campuses. While it succeeded in getting St. Thomas back on its feet, the Holy Cross also commissioned a 1930 architectural plan for the campus from Boston-based architectural firm Maginnis & Walsh that would go on to have an even more profound impact on the university.
While some of the plan’s unrealized ideas — such as an imposing tower standing between Aquinas and Roach and a staggering football stadium with a movable roof — may raise eyebrows nearly a century later, Young said, the Maginnis & Walsh plan laid the groundwork for buildings and design concepts that have outlived their creators, such as the early plans for the arches.
The plan’s inception also led to the adoption of the campus’ trademark Gothic Revival style present in buildings like Roach, Young said — a style popular during that period of the early 20th century. Kenne said that the distinction between using yellow Kasota limestone for academic buildings and red brick for residence halls — like those seen on the exterior of Grace Hall — can also be traced back to the 1930 plan.
“Whatever we can find out about the history of the school informs us going forward,” Kenne said. “Anything that we can go back to and say, ‘This is where these values that the university has, has come from, come from our beginning, and this is how it’s manifested in St. Thomas today,’ is good for us.”
For Young, these nuggets of the campus’ architectural history tell a story — one that she hopes to help students discover in her new Architecture and Art St. Thomas course next semester. As of Nov. 25, both sections had already filled their 25-student capacities.
The rapidly changing landscape of a campus like St. Thomas’ makes the need to study it all the greater, Young said. Colleges tear buildings down more quickly than usual due to demands for new facilities — like the demolition of Cretin Hall and McCarthy Gymnasium that took place earlier this year to make way for the Lee and Penny Anderson Arena — which only leaves more history for students to discover.
“Even the things that aren’t here are going to really tell great stories, like the whole South Campus that is now gone, designed by Cass Gilbert, who designed the Minnesota State Capitol and then went on to Washington, D.C.” Young said. “ … We’ve had really great architects, and continue to have great architects, associated with this campus, and that continues to elevate the things we’re doing here.”
Even in modern buildings, Young said, art historians can analyze St. Thomas’ history in the making. She said she recently took an admissions tour in preparation for her new course to see which parts of the campus the university deems significant enough to show off and incorporate into its outward identity and brand.
“Buildings leave clues, and buildings leave clues because they’re always the product of a certain time and place,” Young said. “It’s like there are certain elements in the Schoenecker Center that already are dating; everybody will know it was 2020, and that’ll be conversations we’re having 50 years from now.”
While many of the firms involved in past architectural projects, like Brioschi-Minuti, have shut down or been bought out, Young hopes that the university will reach out to the companies’ successor firms to combine resources to restore other records previously thought lost. By doing so, Young hopes more students will grow to appreciate the history and artistry behind the “really beautiful place that they’re going to school at.”
“It’s just building up the historical record, using that as a way to teach the history of art and architecture,” Young said. “But for students at St. Thomas, I mean, they’re still living it, so that’s a really wonderful layer on top of everything.”
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.