I had been planning a museum trip to Washington for some time and when I came across the web site for this museum and this exhibition I decided to go at once. I am intrigued by the concept of the architectural museum and curious how the various venues overcome the inherent problems in the exhibition of architectural subjects. I won’t repeat here what I have already written on this subject and which you can read in the first few paragraphs of my blog post of July 2009, Frank Lloyd Wright, From Within Outward, at the Guggenheim Museum, NYC.
I’m happy to report that this museum has the best solution to those problems although with some reservations, those reservations having to do with the museum, not with their exhibitions. As the greater part of this building appears to be unused empty space, I had the sense that having established the museum, the federal government has subsequently given it short shrift. With greater support through a vibrant organization of friends and supporters, this could become a first class institution performing an important service to the American people by enhancing the appreciation of our architectural heritage and our understanding of architecture as a major art form. Conveniently located in the Capitol Hill area it is a prime candidate for a first class venue with that function.
The Building.
The building was erected in 1887 as the Pension Bureau. It has a very large foot print: it is two blocks long and one block deep. The style is Italian Renaissance in red brick. On the exterior it references the Farnese Palace. It appears to be about five stories high but has only three levels of windows. There is a raised section in the center running almost the length of the building and a raised center section that is another five stories high. Both the elevated main and the central section have the typical low rising Italianate gabled roofs.
Above the first level of windows there is a buff colored glazed terracotta frieze which illustrates the civil war troops on the move. This frieze extends all around the building. I suppose the “pension” in the building name and function refers to the veterans of that historical event. Each tile in the frieze is about eighteen by twenty four inches. It breaks down into four or so sections: profile portraits of the marching troops (many of them appearing to be African Americans), the officers mounted on horseback, the artillery mounted on caissons, etc. Each episode is composed of five or six of the large tiles.
It is a lovely idea and while looking at the details I became aware that in many of the sections certain of the tiles were repeated so that the episodes were made longer. The tiles that were repeated were not the same as each episode was repeated. I was curious why this had been done. Did someone not read the plans carefully and specify fewer tiles than were needed or was this planned from the beginning in order to cut costs …having to design only five molds when six tiles would be needed? Or, and possibly more likely, were molds made during the restoration from some of the tiles and new tiles inserted as replacements? I am a big fan of architectural details that incorporate the local flora, fauna, and history, so obviously I was delighted to discover this.
A terracotta band of single tiles with one design motif encircles the building above the second story windows.
Going inside one steps almost immediately into an enormous atrium: the whole center of the building, about the size of a city block, is hollow. The offices are only along the exterior walls and they are likely only one room deep. While this seems a tremendous waste of space, the building as conceived was required to have a second function of providing a venue in Washington for large indoor public events: this atrium has often been used for presidential balls, most recently being one of the sites of an inaugural ball for President Obama. It is also the stage for the annual Christmas from Washington television program and while I was there theater lighting, draperies, and scaffolding were being erected.
As mentioned the center section rises another five or so stories above the main building and this section rests on eight enormous columns across the building width, four per side. As seen in the photographs documenting the construction, these columns are made of red brick, plastered over, and painted with a raw sienna faux marble. It is claimed that these are the tallest interior columns in the world. I don’t doubt it … they are eight feet in diameter at the base and rest on plinths with a pressed terracotta fascia. Awesome!
Windows all around just under the roofline allow wonderful diffused light into the interior. The roof is now made of metal trusses and what looks like a metal roofing material. I would love to know what the original roof had been …I suppose wooden trusses but as the building was required to be fireproof, perhaps not. They might have been cast iron but in a fire cast iron will melt …hence, reinforced concrete was invented!
The stairways to the upper floors are recessed within the outside section between the offices and there are uninterrupted balconies or a mezzanine all around each of those two floors. These are supported by an abundance of cast iron railings, columns, and brackets and although it is a wonderful preservation of the architectural past, it is a great example, albeit a negative example, of a conglomeration of syntactical architectural clichés used to define “The Great Hall”. Surprisingly, in all this metal, there are no interesting details whatsoever. It is a perfect example of a new technology used to replicate design concepts from the past. It bears a resemblance to the past but it is a manufactured, contrived, resemblance, it is not the past. Architectural students should be required to come here to see this so that they better understand Frank Lloyd Wright, the Bauhaus, and Charles and Ray Eames, all of whom championed using the new technologies and prefabricated elements to create new design concepts. The only reference this building makes to the age in which it was made is in the evidence of the achievement of wealth and abundance in the Victorian era.
The Museum.
When I say that the building appears to be largely unused it is because the museum has used three spaces for galleries and one for the bookstore on the west end and all of the rest of the building appears to be empty. While there is security staff at the four entry doors, there is no information desk or staff presence except for the docents within each gallery.
On the second level there is an exhibition of the photography of Phillip Trager. Mr. Trager is known as an architectural photographer. (Prior to this, I was unaware of his name.) The work here includes examples of his work in the United States, Paris, and on the subject of Italian Villas. He has also done a series on dancers. His work is sold as individual photographs and in very expensive books. According to the interpretation he has been very successful, but his work seemed to me extremely commonplace …with a rather retro thirties/fifties feel to it it seemed to reference both Henri Cartier Bresson and Cecil Beaton. The prints in the exhibition are from the Library of Congress which has his archives.
Back on the main floor an exhibition whose name I did not record is in a sense an overview of the museum collection. They have the archives for the Northwestern Tile Company of over 50,000 drawings. Northwestern, located in Chicago, made decorative glazed terracotta tile, including work for Louis Sullivan. The exhibition includes drawings, tiles and ornamental figures. There is a very large façade of a dormer window. The museum has as well the archives of the Kress Company, of the early twentieth century five and dime empire. Kress maintained a staff architect and was determined that their stores would have a superior design and sense of elegance beyond that of their competitors. Many of those stores have been razed but in 2005 I saw the Kress Store on the city square in downtown El Paso and thought it one of the best designed buildings in that city.
Mindful of the need to provide a shifting focus within an exhibition, to vary the attention from photographs, plans and elevations, to actual pieces of ornamentation and architectural details, this museum has the best approach to the architectural museum that I have seen.
House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage.
Back in the days when I would drive a car in an American city I knew when it came time to park it that I had to be on the lookout for the site of a razed building, the land now leveled and jammed with other cars and with a country outhouse posted out front proclaiming itself an office …or a four or five story building with no windows, looking like a bombed out shell. In I don’t know how many cities I have had strangers waving parking lot stubs rush up and ask if I knew where such and such a parking place was. It has been my understanding that the parking garage is so common an eyesore in the urban landscape that we tend not to see it; it has become an invisible public icon. Once we have availed ourselves of its function we tend to forget it …both what it looks like and where it is. Yet there they are in city after city replicating like rabbits. I have often wondered why something better isn’t done. But, of course, they are not there as a civic enhancement but as a means to make money and in the best American tradition the less that is spent to make the most money the better the investment. The public be damned.
Often it has seemed to me that the public parking garage would make a fine exercise for architecture students. So far as I know only a few architects have taken the automobile into consideration in their work. Very few cities seem to have been willing to tackle the subject. In Portland, Oregon a strong zoning law requires that each building over a certain size must include retail on the street level and ample parking space inside to service the anticipated population use of the building. That is an excellent solution although there are many buildings in downtown Portland that seem ghostly empty on floors two through four. In Washington I became aware that each new building of a certain size has parking underground. If there is no money to be made in a well designed building I suppose that is the best solution.
This exhibition is excellent. It is comprehensive in its coverage of the subject, beginning with the history of the first appearance of the automobile, showing how it shared the streets with horses and buggies, how cars were first parked first come first served in the middle of the streets, how the stables and liveries eventually became garages for the cars, and how garages were then erected specifically for the cars. It is a multimedia exhibition using everything from photographs, newspaper clippings, posters, and even a mint condition Ford Model A.
There is a section on the solutions proposed, and sometimes actually built, by such architects as Adolph Loos, Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Rudolph, I. M. Pei, and Rosenberg in Chicago. One section illustrates the various mechanical systems used to park cars …in drawings, photographs and a short film.
Another section is an art exhibit in which the parking garage was the subject of paintings, drawings, and photographs. A film on a continuous loop shows scenes from well known movies wherein scenes made inside the parking garage are played …West Side Story, Some Like it Hot, crime films, science fiction, etc.
Ironically the last section presents an overview of the efforts made by those interested in historic preservation to save the oldest of the earlier examples. Once again, I think this should be required viewing for architectural students.
I also embarrassed myself while here. At one point, looking at a selection of material from which architects select a building’s cover, I ran my hand over a surface to see exactly what it was. “Please do not touch the art works”, the young female docent scolded. I swear I have never touched a museum art work before in my life! I don’t know what came over me.
There is no museum restaurant here but there is a niche in the wall from which two lovely Mexican girls serve from a cauldron of soup along with a variety of breads, rolls, and pastries, as well as coffee and other drinks. Tables arranged around the Great Hall under the overhang of the above balconies offer a great place to sit and lunch while enjoying the vastness of the restored building. While I enjoyed the quiet I was at the same time sorry that this wonderful venue was not more popular with the museum going crowd.
The Great Hall
http://www.nbm.org/about-us/historic-building/
The Collection:
http://www.nbm.org/exhibitions-collections/collections/
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