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Modern Problems
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this article originally appeared in the January 25, 2001 issue of the Philadelphia City Paper Name some significant buildings in Philadelphia. How about the Youth Study Center on the Parkway? Penn Center Plaza, or the Visitors Center at 16th and JFK Boulevard? What, these don’t make your list? Perhaps you are affected by what architect Robert Venturi has called the "grandmother principle." At a recent conference called "Preserving the Recent Past," Venturi described the principle: "You hate your mother’s wedding gown in your parent’s wedding photograph, but you love your grandmother’s gown in your grandparent’s wedding photograph." In other words, we will almost always regard the styles of our immediate past as hideous, abhorrent dips into universal bad taste, and only after the buffer of a generation are we able to step back and appreciate them. This issue underlies the concerns of a group called DOCOMOMO (pronounced with long O’s, like "cocoa") which rather creatively stands for International Working Party for the Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement. Founded in the late ’80s in the Netherlands, this international consortium of architects and preservationists was originally organized to preserve works of the early Modern movement, mainly buildings built between 1915 and 1945 in Northern and Eastern Europe. Not only did many of these structures face lack of attention due to the "grandmother principle," but they posed special preservation challenges in that they had often been constructed with experimental materials, non-traditional techniques and sometimes with limited budgets. Representatives from DOCOMOMO were in attendance at the Philadelphia conference, and had the opportunity to meet with Philadelphia architect Charles Evers, of the firm Atkin, Olshin, Lawson-Bell and a member of the Historic Resources Committee of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), who has long had an interest in the group’s activities. Evers and Preservation Committee chair Bob Hotes took the conference as an impetus for forming a local DOCOMOMO chapter. The new group met for a second time last week at the Center City offices of Sandvold Blanda Architecture + Interiors. The focus of the group is on buildings, landscapes or public projects constructed roughly between 1920 and 1970 and, most importantly, fitting the definition of Modernism. That’s with a capital "M" — not the vernacular term interchangeable with "contemporary" or "updated," but the stylistic movement that, to quote the DOCOMOMO U.S. manifesto, "…puts its faith in progress. It embodies the unique early 20th century notion that artistic works must look forward to the future without overt references to historical precedent." Architect and group member Shawn Evans, also of Atkin, Olshin, Lawson-Bell, summed up the group’s task: "We must advocate for buildings that are in danger of demolition but are off the radar of the mainstream historical preservation organizations because they simply are not old enough to meet historical criteria, but more importantly, we need to emphasize education and raising awareness — not necessarily being reactionary and going in front of the bulldozer, but pointing out to the public how these things that still exist are wonderful and deserve appreciation." The first step for the Philadelphia group is to compile a detailed preliminary list of preservation-worthy structures in the tri-state area. Evers points out that the Philadelphia area contains a large number of significant Modern structures, although because the city does not have a strictly defined district of 20th-century buildings, like Miami or Los Angeles, these distinctive examples are not often recognized by the general public. Keep in mind that the places to be referenced for documentation aren’t all cool, obvious examples such as the in-your-face orange façade of the National Products Showroom in Old City, but often fall into that mom’s wedding dress category: unflashy, possibly dowdy to 2001 eyes, but nonetheless significant for various reasons, whether it be structure, style or precedent. Among those structures specifically cited by members was the circular, glass-walled Visitors Center at 16th and JFK Boulevard. The Center may soon fall out of use once the National Constitution Center (which will include a regional Gateway Visitors Center) at Fifth and Market is completed. Andrew Blanda of Sandvold Blanda took special note of the Public Health Services building at Broad and Lombard, which is slated to be torn down soon to make way for a parking lot. As originally designed by Montgomery & Bishop Architects in 1960, the building was a gleaming jewel of blue, aqua and glass planes evoking the streamlined municipal optimism of the post-war era. Its current state of dingy disrepair has contributed to the lack of interest in its preservation, according to Blanda, and this is a common problem: "Due to the simple detailing of the best Modern buildings, a lack of maintenance can be confused with bad design." Blanda mentions that the Sidney Hillman Medical Center on Chestnut Street at 21st, designed by Henry J. Magaziner, is an example of the type of Modern building kept in good repair that the group would like to organize tours of. Magaziner, in fact, was present at last week’s meeting; a former architect with the National Park Service whose father was an associate of famed architect Louis I. Kahn, he is something of an elder statesman for the cause of Modernist preservation that the group espouses. He relayed one of his personal disappointments, underlining the need for documentation of recent Modern architecture: Upon a recent visit to a mid-20th-century housing building he designed in Media that had featured a series of balconies overlooking a courtyard with a lovely central tree, Magaziner found the building, now the Media Borough Hall, stripped of its major design components. The balconies had been removed, the tree and courtyard had been supplanted with an unsightly annex building, and the interior had been chopped up, divided by panels of soundproof glass — in short, the structure had been "modernized" out of its Modernism, transformed into yet another faceless monument to bureaucratic conformity. In Blanda’s view, this type of situation exemplifies a stubborn shortsightedness. "To know who we are as a culture today, we have to view the whole of architecture, and not selectively cleanse history through demolition for the sake of convenience." And he adds a warning: "It is important to remember that at one time many Frank Furness buildings were torn down by an uninformed public." So next time you’re on, say, the Parkway, take another look at that Youth Study Center, designed, by the way, by Carroll, Grisdale & Van Alen, a firm Blanda refers to as "one of the most underappreciated in the city." Try to put aside the scary, Orwellian connotations of the building’s name. Picture it cleaned up. And think about your grandmother’s wedding dress. Reproduced courtesy of the Philadelphia City Paper Joan K. Smith is an artist, freelance writer, and Associate Director of InLiquid.com return to InLiquid's Commentary section index ©2003 InLiquid.com; text ©2001 Joan K. Smith and the Philadelphia City Paper |
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