Gettysburg Cyclorama Center Gets
Reprieve From Demolition
By Kathryn Jorgensen
(December 2008 Civil War News)
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Saving architect Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Center at Gettysburg may not be as impossible as once thought despite National Park Service/Gettysburg Foundation plans to demolish it in December:
• The federal magistrate judge hearing the suit to save the building recently gave the park a week to spell out its plans. The park now says it will delay demolition until the court rules.
• The company that moved an airport terminal, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and other historic structures says the Cyclorama building can be moved.
• Two local businessmen have offered sites for the building, one just across from the park entrance on Steinwehr Avenue.
Despite years of effort to save the Cyclorama building, the plan has been for it and the old visitor center to be demolished as part of the Gettysburg Foundation’s $7 million Cemetery Ridge restoration.
Architectural historian Chris Madrid French, with allies including Richard Neutra’s son Dion, has led the effort to save the building. It is in the National Register of Historic Places and is one of four cyclorama buildings in the U.S. The World Monuments Fund listed it among the most 100 endangered sites.
French charges the park service has not met the requirements of Section 106, a lengthy part of the National Historic Preservation Act that requires federal agencies “to take into account the effects of their undertakings on historic properties.”
French, Neutra and the Recent Past Preservation Network, a volunteer non-profit French heads that tries to preserve architecture that is less than 50 years old, filed suit in December 2006. The U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Park Service (NPS), Supt. John Latschar and NPS Director Mary Bomar were among those named.
The lawsuit alleged multiple violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act which require an Environmental Impact Statement and Environmental Assessment and consideration of reasonable alternative means of implementing the park’s general policy of restoring Ziegler’s Grove.
The suit seeks to require compliance with federal requirements, and preliminary and permanent injunctions prohibiting demolition or alteration of the building pending litigation of the issues raised in the complaint.
After the Hearing of Summary Judgment held before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Alan Kay on Oct. 30 in Washington, French said, “Court was fantastic for us.”
The court’s order that the park tell the court its plans for the Cyclorama “slows down the process and lets people think maybe a little more clearly,” said French. It was “great news for us.”
While U.S. Department of Justice attorney Samantha Klein’s letter to Judge Kay said that the NPS would not demolish the building prior to the district court ruling, it also said the NPS will solicit bids to demolish both the Cyclorama and visitor center buildings and will go ahead with the latter demolition.
The park service will inform potential bidders that it will direct that “no demolition of the Cyclorama Building will take place before the district court’s ruling on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment.”
French said the court process has no timetable. The magistrate judge will review everything, another judge will review it and the parties will be brought back for more discussion or resolution.
French is hopeful that the change of administrations in Washington and possibly in the Department of Interior could change things.
“We are willing to work with whoever is in charge at Gettysburg and the National Park Service (NPS) and Department of Interior,” she said.
A New Site?
Among the options French said the NPS must consider is moving the building. “It is definitely possible to move the Cyclorama building,” she said, noting that the moved lighthouse belongs to the NPS.
Jerry Matyiko, president and owner of Expert House Movers who did the lighthouse job, gave a statement that the cyclorama Center can be moved by rolling on dolly wheels and a grid of steel beams. He estimated the moving cost at $5 million.
French said the plaintiffs asked for his analysis “to indicate to the court that the NPS did not do all it should.”
“All of this shows that the building has reuse opportunities available that have not been explored,” she says.
Local businessmen Eric Uberman and Robert Monahan both offered sites for the building. Uberman, owner of the Gettysburg Gift Center on Steinwehr Avenue, is within sight of the Cyclorama building.
He said he would lease the land to a 501(c)(3) organization for $1 a year plus any property taxes. This would enable the nonprofit to get funds and grants without having to buy land.
Uberman said the round building would fit on his site, but perhaps not the administrative office part of the structure. He suggested it could be used as a museum-in-the-round, such as the Hirshhorn in Washington or the Guggenheim in New York.
When asked about zoning requirements, Uberman said he thinks the borough would bend over backwards to help the revitalization of Steinwehr Avenue. “I believe exceptions for the betterment of the community as well as increasing the tax base would be welcomed by local officials,” he said.
Neutra’s Building
The Cyclorama Center was one of 100 modern visitor centers built at park sites as part of Mission 66, a 10-year program launched in 1956 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service in 1966. It cost $1 million and opened in 1962 with President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicating it.
In a 2005 CWN interview, Devin Colman of the Recent Past Preservation Network called the Cyclorama Center “a prime example of American modern architecture. It’s a product of its time and these are the buildings we need to hang onto. If you lose the building, you lose a whole layer of history.”
Colman said the park service specifically wanted a modern building. “The goal was to emphasize that they were marching forward into the future. It was a progressive stand.”
The Cyclorama Center was Neutra’s only federal commission, according to Colman, and his only public building east of the Mississippi.
Dion Neutra was project architect for the building. He said his father, who was born in Austria, saw the project as more about commemorating Lincoln’s speech than the site of the South’s defeat.
Writing in the December 2001 Preservation News column, Neutra pointed out the NPS chose the Cyclorama Center site because it would “facilitate interpretation and appreciation of the importance of this spot on the battlefield to the war.”
After seeing the painting visitors could go to the observation terrace and see the same landscape as in the painting.
Neutra wrote, “To say that [building] removal would restore this scene to Civil War days is rank cynicism. No one seriously plans to remove the myriad of other monuments that have sprung up, nor the adjacent highway with its motels in plain view, or the many park roads that allow movement around the area.”
In Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma (2007) author Ethan Carr called Richard Neutra the “most renowned” architect to work on the Mission 66 program.
Carr described the “powerful location” chosen for the building, its minimalist style and low massing set partially in trees and called it “the high point of the entire Mission 66 architectural design effort.”
The lawsuit document and other information about the efforts to save the Cyclorama Center can be found at www.mission66.com. |