The renowned and controversial architect had a grandiose plan, and in 1938 he put it on paper. Much later, the New York Times said this of Wright's original: It was "a grand vision of towers, fountains and terraces rising from the shores of Lake Monona in the shadow of the Capitol...The 1938 design would have incorporated city and government offices and chambers, a railroad station, courts and a jail." Considering the estimated price tag -- $17 million -- city officials gulped. Wright, typically when he didn't get his way, fumed. "Madison could dig into its pocket and pay something for the charm nature has given it," he said. "But maybe Madison can't look ahead 10 years. It is too provincial, backwater, smug and satisfied." In a speech to a civic group, Wright elaborated: "You should have an eye to the future, instead of planning something that will be a dump as soon as it's built...This building will take character, and courage, and vision and intelligence, yes, and sympathy with the beautiful..." In 1941, city voters overcame Wright's assessment of their level of satisfaction and okayed funding for a municipal auditorium, with Wright's plan of three years earlier under serious consideration. Not long after the vote Pearl Harbor was bombed and it wasn't until several years after the war, in 1948, that the city and county once again agreed to collaborate on an adminstrative building. Voters approved financing in 1952 for a functional design by a Chicago architect. The Wright plan, however, wasn't dead. City leaders still recognized the need for an auditorium or civic center, and in 1954 a city council committee put on the ballot a referendum for the Monona Terrace site, with Wright redesigning his original plan. It looked to be a done deal: voters also okayed a $4.5 million bond issue to finance the project. But one could not discount the depth of feeling in the project's opponents -- with much of the enmity directed at Wright himself. One prominent foe, a Madisonian named Colonel Joe Jackson, called Wright a communist and instituted a taxpayers' lawsuit against the city. Jackson's ally, local attorney and state legislator Carroll Metzner, got a bill through the Capitol preventing buildings of more than some 20 feet to be constructed on the shore of Lake Monona. It was ugly. The New York Times called the bickering that torpedoed the project in those years "political sabotage."