True Green Cities / Two Years & Counting: What Does Preservation Mean To Your Community?

The longer I work in the architecture, preservation and now sustainability fields, the more I realize that what good design means in one place may not be what good design means in another; what is a sustainable energy source in one place may not be possible in another; what is considered preservation in New York City and what is considered preservation in Cedar Rapids may be completely different things. What is important to my community, may not be important to yours.  And the four long acknowledged “historic preservation” treatments as proclaimed by the National Park Service – preservation, rehabilitation, restoration and reconstruction -  are in many places irrelevant, or are at best mixtures.  Preservation, like everything else as I am realizing in my aging wisdom, exists in more of a gray world than I ever anticipated when I first studied preservation at Columbia in the mid-1980s.

Moving a Cultural Icon Across the Street

Moving a historic building isn’t even listed in the possible preservation treatments for historic buildings.  It changes the historic context; it’s a treatment of last resort.  But when the building is the most important building in your community and means more than where it happens to be located, then moving, as drastic as that is, may be all you can do, all you want to do.  Every year I travel to Cedar Rapids, IA to visit relatives.  Over the past couple of years the big story has been first the epic flooding of downtown Cedar Rapids in June, 2008 and then the follow up restoration of the buildings damaged from those shocking floods.  One of the most heavily damaged sites was the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library on the banks of the Cedar River.  The Museum, built in 1993, is the heart of the largest Czech & Slovac community in the U.S., Czech Village.  Indeed when the new museum opened in 1995, President Clinton, President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic and President Michal Kovac of the Slovak Republic presided over its dedication.

The museum had over $11M in damage when over eight feet of water flowed through the museum and the library.  After evaluating the options of remaining where they were and having difficulty obtaining insurance because of the fear of another flood, demolishing the building and starting over somewhere else or moving the existing building, the museum chose to move its buildings and collections about 480 feet further from the river.  The museum’s reasons for moving across the street included that it was less expensive to move the building than demolish and start over, they wanted to preserve the building for its historic value and they wanted to avoid creating unnecessary landfill waste. Since the building was still structurally sound, it was able to be moved and then placed on an elevated foundation – 11 feet higher than the previous site and three feet above the 2008 flood level.  The building was moved over two days, June 8-9^th, 2011.  It was estimated that it weighed approximately 3 million pounds (or 1500 tons) and was constructed of wood frame and brick veneer.   A video on their website takes viewers through the moving process. The project was overseen and designed by Durrant, an architectural firm headquartered in Dubuque, Iowa.** It’s really quite fascinating and I’m sorry we didn’t make it to Cedar Rapids to watch it.  Since they went to this great effort, they expanded the building and added as many energy efficient and green measures as made sense including geothermal heating, solar thermal domestic hot water, increased wall and roof insulation, advanced lighting and daylighting controls. The project has submitted for LEED 2009 NC certification which is still in process, currently recording 45 points (Certified).

The building reopened July 14, 2012.  We visited it about three weeks after it reopened.  It was rather spooky seeing it on the other side of the street.  The museum had temporarily located in a historic commercial building on Main Street in the Czech Village, the Kosek building, and this satellite remains open as a secondary gift shop and with exhibits about the flood.  I love visiting the Czech Village.  It’s across the river from the rest of downtown Cedar Rapids, and while it is somewhat isolated it also has significant charm and sense of place.  Visiting the shops for Czech glass ware and pastries is always a treat when we visit.

Different Choices for Different Places

My initial thought was that this was a very odd thing to do.  But since I had several years to consider it and observe its impact on the community, I warmed up to the idea.  The building is only 20 years old and not particularly inspired from a design-sense.  But it’s their museum and they are very proud of its meaning, of the visitors they have had there and of its importance to keeping their community alive.  And now moving the museum has become an important part of their legacy as well.  I like the fact that they consider it “historic” when it’s just 20 years old.  It is in its own way a preservation win. And in this time of more and more preservation battles, we can take them wherever and however!  And I like the fact that sustainability was a huge deciding factor as well.

Two Years & Counting

As a celebration of my firm’s two-year anniversary I will be posting each day this week about places I’ve visited in the past year. I’ve been thinking a lot about this move in Cedar Rapids since we were there last August and what it says about the importance of a concept of place to a community.  There was an article in the NY Times yesterday about two historic black churches with profound historic significance which stand in the way of the new football stadium.  Their congregations are debating whether to take the offer to move them elsewhere.  And in the NY Times on Sunday, Robert A. M. Stern wrote a very heartfelt and informed op-ed about saving East Midtown from the city’s new zoning recommendations.  I suggest you take a look at it if you are also beginning to question “all dense all the time.”  I love this paragraph especially:  In fact, the best path toward ensuring the future of East Midtown may well be that of preservation. Preservation, which too many in the real estate community reflexively oppose, has been a better stimulant for development than rezoning. SoHo and the Flatiron district were two of the most moribund parts of the city in the 1960s and ’70s; once they were designated as historic districts, the fortunes that poured in made them more vital than ever.  Now if only MOMA would take up that mantra with the American Folk Art Museum.

**(Note: Sadly, Durrant Architects, the firm overseeing the move of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, declared bankruptcy and ceased operations just prior to the completion of this project, unrelated to this project). 

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True Green Cities / Two Years & Counting: Manhattan’s West 53rd Street – A Modern Rejection

The only things that keep West 53rd street from descending into a dense streetscape of banal skyscrapers which could be in Houston, Charlotte or La Defense are the exquisite American Folk Art Museum building and what remains of the original Museum of Modern Art.  How does a museum that puts on the brilliantly curated and designed exhibit on an arcane French architect named Henri Labrouste announce at the same time their intention to demolish one of the most innovative pieces of architectural art in America?

A Blockbuster Named Labrouste

The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) was created in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) and two of her friends.  Its first president, A. Conger Goodyear, was the former president of Buffalo’s Albright Art Gallery, often considered the first modern art museum in America.  The Modern’s first permanent building was opened on West 53^rd Street in 1939, designed in the International Style by Architects Phillip Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone.  Philip Johnson redesigned the garden and was influential as both a design provocateur and a curator.  Since 1983 the museum has expanded horizontally and vertically, first with the 53-story Museum Tower (mostly high priced residences) and in 2004 the expansion and redesign of the museum proper by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi.  Both the 1983 and 2004 expansions are boring and uninspired, dwarfing the gem-like original 1939 building and its neighbor, the American Folk Art Museum.  MOMA in its 21^st century form has become a mall for art.

As trite as its recent architecture has been, the innovation of its curated exhibits and collecting has continued.  These exhibits have both created global art phenomenon and recorded them including the 1932 groundbreaking International Exhibition of Modern Architecture curated by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson whose accompanying book “The International Style” came to be the name of a global style; the 1949 “House in the Museum Garden” by Marcel Breuer; Arthur Drexler’s manifesto exhibition on “The Architecture of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts” in 1977; the introduction of an entire generation to Viennese Art, Architecture & Design in 1986 and now “Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light.”

In one of my monthly trips to New York City in March, I was delighted to be able to fit in a visit to see the recently opened Labrouste exhibition which has received only rave reviews for both its content and the exhibit’s design.  The fantastic drawings and models, the way they are displayed and the story told about Labrouste’s Parisian libraries, is a celebration of architecture for architects.  It literally took my breath away and was one of those experiences in which I muttered, “I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy” at the same time being so proud to be an architect.  The book of the same name is profound scholarship itself, written by the joint directors and their curators at Paris’ architecture museum, the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine and MOMA. Having visited the Cité de l’Architecture last year, marveling over floors of models and salvaged architectural elements, it is a joy to see its impact here.

Trading In Art for Real Estate

Which brings us to the American Folk Art Museum.  The tale of this museum is a cautionary one for all institutions not to overextend themselves.  The museum was established in 1961 and opened its doors to the public for the first time on September 27, 1963, in the rented parlor floor of a townhouse at 49 West 53rd Street. In 1979, the museum purchased two townhouses adjacent to 49 West 53rd Street, just west of MOMA.  It rented space until its building, designed by Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects opened in 2001. The façade of the 85-foot tall building is clad in sixty-three textured panels of a lustrous white bronze alloy known as Tombasil. The material—used here for the first time architecturally—is faceted in three large planes that evoke the human hand and catch the light at different angles. A large skylight crowns a ceiling-to-floor open core, sending natural light through the entire height of the building. It displayed 500 pieces of the 5,000 piece collection.  I only visited the museum once but it was a giddy experience with another modernist friend, a distinct difference from the bombast of its neighbor’s art mall.

The American Folk Art Museum board had taken on $32 million in debt to finance the museum and then defaulted on that in 2009. MOMA purchased the site in 2011 for $31.2 million, announcing earlier this month its demolition plans to make way for more gallery space that is more in keeping aesthetically with its white steel and glass. And the floors of the little museum that could won’t line up with its lofty floor heights.  Their announcement has met with universal derision.  Paul Goldberger’s piece on it for Vanity Fair is a good and irate read.There are so many reasons to keep this building, all of which MOMA could easily embrace.  It could be used to display its own architecture and design collection.  It could be an educational center.  It could even be another money-making restaurant or shopping venture (my least favorite choice.) It could be MOMA’s example of adaptive use and as such could become its own sustainability think tank.  They could ask its designers to help them remake it.

Glenn Lowry, the museum’s director, paid Todd Williams and Billie Tsien a visit at their offices to inform them of the board’s decision. Did any of the board accompany him?  No! Todd and Billie’s statement on their website is heartbreaking.  The Folk Art Building stands as an example of a modest and purposefully conceived and crafted space for art and the public: a building type that is all too rare in a city often defined by bigness and impersonality.  We remain enormously proud of it, and are deeply saddened that a significant building that was a source of enjoyment and inspiration for so many will now be lost forever. 

What a class act.  I served on an arts panel with Billie in the mid 1990s and have crossed paths with them at Columbia alumni events. I have always been impressed by the modest demeanors of these design giants.

I’ve been thinking about our landmarks laws in regards to this sad situation and acknowledge that our protection of landmarks by age is so limited.  We save good background buildings that are over 50 years old and are encouraged to use rehabilitation investment tax credits on their reuse.  But for this building, a landmark and icon before it was even built, we have no way to protect it from a real estate and money-hungry museum monster, other than in the court of public opinion.

Can Anything Save The Folk Art Museum?

There is no code or landmark ordinance today that can protect the Folk Art Museum. The only thing that will save it is if MOMA reverses its decision and does what’s right.  Is that too much to ask of one of America’s creators and defenders of modern beauty and innovation?

Two Years & Counting

As a celebration of my firm’s two-year anniversary I will be posting each day this week about places I’ve visited in the past year.  New York City is the great city love of my life, so to have to share this story about the American Folk Art Museum is particularly hard.  We can only hope that the cultural powerhouses who are calling for MOMA to rethink their announcement will have some impact.

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True Green Cities / Two Years & Counting: Adapting or Reusing

Sometimes adapting and reusing are two different actions. A recent visit to Philadelphia got me thinking about the definition of both words, and what happens when architecturally they aren’t used together.  Two very different approaches to existing and new buildings got me thinking about how many different ways buildings can and should be treated.  And that what’s right for one, may not be for another.

Reusing the Former Philadelphia Stock Exchange

The International Style Philadelphia Stock Exchange building is one modern Pennsylvania building that found a new use without the drama that we saw surrounding the demolition of the Gettysburg Cyclorama.  The luxury Sofitel Hotel in the business core of Philadelphia, near Rittenhouse Square, is a modernist dream designed by Vincent Kling & Associates in 1965 as the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. The fourteen story concrete and steel building was adapted into 306 rooms, opening in May 2001.

The hotel renovation was designed by Brennan Beer Gorman Architects from New York City.  Little remains of the original interior and a quick Google search did not offer any images of what the original contained, whether there were any grand entry or meeting spaces that were lost.  But the joy of staying at this fabulous and now luxurious modernist structure with exquisite hotel interiors was the best of both worlds.

Adapting the Concept of an Original Museum

The new LEED Platinum certified Barnes Foundation Museum is one of the most contentious and controversial design projects in the museum world. Classical architect Paul Cret designed the museum in 1922 in Merion, suburb of Philadelphia, for Albert Barnes, a chemist who collected art after making a fortune by co-developing an early anti-gonorrhea drug marketed as Argyrol and selling his company at the right time, before antibiotics came into use. Barnes collected Modern and Impressionist masterpieces, which are estimated today to be worth in the $25 billion range.    By the 1990s, financial woes, a suburban location difficult to access, little room for expansion and a deteriorating original building led the board to petition the courts to remove the restrictions placed on the running of the museum.  Whole dissertations are being written on this project and its legal actions, which I will not try to explain, but instead will send you to the Wikipedia page as a start (it has a very good list of primary references).

Designed by Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the construction for the new building started in Fall 2009 and was completed in May 2012.  The new facility houses the collection in galleries that replicate the scale, proportion and configuration of the original Merion galleries and while I never visited the original museum, I understand that more natural lighting in the form of a light box hovering over the building has improved the viewing experience. The new site contains increased space for the foundation’s art education program and conservation department, a retail shop, and cafe.  The architects say that the new museum was “conceived as a gallery in a garden and a garden in a gallery. “ The fossilized limestone cladding and light box skylighting weave the remade galleries and new public spaces together. Like most of their work, the building is a stunning piece of sculpture with breathtaking views around each corner and at the end of each hallway.  The lighting brings out the richness of the limestone, even on the overcast day I visited it.  The galleries and placement of the art, which replicates the original, are quirky and overwhelming.  I’ve never seen so many Modiglianis, Picassos, Renoirs and Cezannes together on one wall.  It’s hard to focus on any one painting.  I do find the intermittent placement of old door hardware throughout the paintings amusing though.  Photography of the galleries is not allowed but the TWBT website has some terrific photos.

When this story was playing out in the courts and the media, my initial thoughts were that the will and desires of the founder should be inviolate (the indenture of trust stipulates that the paintings in the collection be kept “in exactly the places they are”).  The original site is also an arboretum.  One of the main reasons argued by the board for its relocation was the need to place it in a more readily accessible location.  Philadelphia offered a site on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the cultural core of Logan Square.  My colleague and I thought it rather amusing that the day we visited, while it was busy, all of the visitors were of a certain age, hair color and economic class.  And no children were in sight.  But it was a Friday afternoon after all.  It is a gorgeous building and site however and it is an intriguing juxtaposition of original concept and new form.  I found the main entry court rather too large and the least interesting of all the spaces – obviously a gesture towards big galas and fundraising events.  The original site now houses the foundation’s headquarters.

Two Years & Counting

As a celebration of my firm’s two-year anniversary I will be posting each day this week about places I’ve visited in the past year.  The adaptive rethinking of both of these Philadelphia buildings reminds us that landmarks can be old, renovated, new or even a combination.  And what matters most in one (the hotel) may mean nothing in the other (the museum).

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