Avriel Shull and I

Avriel Shull has turned into a cigarette-smoking, blue-talking, red-haired guardian angel for me. Ever since Indiana Landmarks Modern Committee hired me to write a National Register of Historic Places nomination for her Thornhurst Addition, it seems that Avriel (the one-named Cher of Indiana architecture) shows up everywhere I go.

As an example, my new beau's ex-mother-in-law was sitting shiva and when we visited to pay our respects, one of the other attendees was Howard Wolner, an Indianapolis architect who was working at the same time as Avriel in the 1950s and 1960s (Wolner is still active). I mentioned that I had been researching and writing about Avriel Shull and he had an Avriel story about building a house right next to one she was building and hearing the bluest language he'd ever heard on a construction site coming from her. I've heard that story from several others; that's classic Avriel.

Avriel has become the Kevin Bacon of Indianapolis for me. Everyone's connected to Avriel. Either they lived in one of her houses, their parent went to Herron Art School with her, they worked for her, or, as in the case of my new friend, Keith, traced her drawings as a high school student! Everyone seems to have known Avriel. Everyone but me, that is.

But I'm getting to know her and the more I research and write about her, the better I like getting to know her. The National Register nomination is at the National Park Service waiting on confirmation to become the first Mid-Century Modern historic district in Indiana. But I'm still learning about her, researching and writing about her. So if you have an Avriel story, please share it with me. Avriel died in 1976 but her spirit definitely lives on in the many, many Avriel buildings and even more Avriel stories.

That picture up there, that's the first home Avriel built in Thornhurst Addition. Cool, huh?

Inspirer, yes it is!

We got a long visit at the North Christian Church in Columbus today. I'm attaching a few of the host of shots I took at this Eero Saarinen-designed church which is one of the National Historic Landmarks in this town. Built in 1964, this building is sometimes affectionately called the Oil Can.
The church newsletter is called The Inspirer. Apt name for this glorious building, too. Believer or not, it's an inspiring, grand space. Here are three quick views from the Dan Kiley landscape, looking into the sanctuary, and looking into the chapel through the screen behind the baptismal pool.

Columbus bridges the gap in style

Columbus is home to extraordinary buildings. According to Wikipedia, a source I am using only because this is a quickfire post, 6 of this city's buildings are National Historic Landmarks. That's a big step up even from being listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and several of these buildings made NHL status before they have reached 50 years of age. Which means they are so exceptional, they were listed even before they reached the normal age to even be CONSIDERED for listing!

There are also extraordinarily cool bridges bringing one into the city from the blahness of the I-65 interstate interchange. Check out these two bridges, shot from my car window as I arrived on this rainy day. Both were designed by J. Muller International. And the Gateway Arch (first pic) is owned by INDOT! Why doesn't INDOT have sexy bridges everywhere? Because not everywhere is Columbus...

Stay tuned for more Columbus posts as this Bloggers' Architecture Tour gets underway. You can follow along on Twitter at #COLMCM

Discovering Columbus

(image from the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau webpage)

Columbus, Indiana, you sweet Midwestern hot spot of modern design, here I come. And not just me: 15 modern architecture/MCM/design bloggers are on their way to walk and talk about you! Keep your eyes posted here for updates and follow along on twitter at #COLMCM

Evans Woollen, the Minton-Capehart Federal Building, and the Circle

Last night I had the opportunity to see and hear Evans Woollen speak for the second time in just a few months. And what a pleasure that was. (See my blog post below about Woollen at New Harmony.)

The lecture at the Indianapolis Museum of Art was more formal than the panel discussion that included Woollen at New Harmony. And it was packed full of more Woollen goodness.

I took notes, but unfortunately some of the most interesting stuff came during the lights-out portion of the talk when Woollen was discussing slides of the Minton-Capehart Federal Building in Indianapolis. This is a building that is often maligned in Indianapolis but its very simple aesthetic has always pleased me. I've written about it before for the Urban Times. (You can see that article here: http://www.urbantimesonline.com/?p=822)

Woollen's insights made me appreciate it even more.

Here are some of the bits of architectural history that one rarely gets to hear straight from the horse's (architect's) mouth.

Woollen and his partners landed the federal contract from the General Services Administration, which was primarily building tall towers at the time. Woollen talked the feds into allowing his firm to basically squish a tower into a shorter, wider footprint that would help to frame the American Legion Mall and allow for use of the entire block without rising taller than the War Memorial across the street.

Thus the inverted ziggurat shape of the building. He talked about "weaving the building like a tapestry" to get the window placement just right and as minimalist as possible so that it would pay homage to the two grand buildings framing the mall on other sides, the Scottish Rite Cathedral and the War Memorial, both of which have few windows. Woollen also spoke about making sure the concrete in the Brutalism style Federal Building would match the limestone color in these two older buildings, and about his desire to design a new building that would be "subservient" to these historic edifices. His modern design was inspired by the Saarinen American Embassy building in London.

He also spoke about the Milton Glaser graphic that acts as a mural on the first story of the building. It was Woollen's idea to have a painting that "wrapped around the building." He wanted something like a "continuous Rothko" but he couldn't find anyone who could grasp the idea or who would take the assignment until he talked to Glaser. The now-famous graphic artist made that painting his own with vertical bands of vibrant colors. Those colors, which have now faded to pastels, showed up boldly and brightly in the vintage kodachromes of Woollen's slides.

What a delight to hear of the careful, thoughtful approach this man took to a building that has not been loved in this city. Earlier in his talk, Woollen said that "sometimes a building is despised at the beginning and loved at the end, or vice versa. I will abide by the end." I hope that his talk last night converts at least a few more Indianapolis residents to an appreciation of his federal building and I wonder if more of us will grow to love it over time.

Oh, Woollen answered a question about the proposed closure of the Circle to vehicles (see my recent blog post about that below). He says he was for it in 1955 and he's for it now. I cut him some slack on that opinion though. He's only human. He can't get everything right.

The Circle is Unbroken

Weighing in on closing Monument Circle to traffic has become the subject du jour for bloggers and opinionators across the city. For a recent opinion piece by the "Star" reporter, Matthew Tully see http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20105260385.

Closing the Circle to vehicular traffic is one of the most numbskull ideas to gain traction in this city in a long time. When Carmel is gaining national recognition for its innovative roundabouts, we're closing one right in the heart of our city. That Circle is a natural traffic calming device. It forces drivers to slow down and take a look. And there is plenty going on so there's always a lot to take a gander at when driving on the Circle.

The Circle also allows for parking directly in front of the few retail businesses that have made a stake on or near it. And we all know Hoosiers need to park within eyesight of their destination or they simply won't go there. So, as others have pointed out, closing the Circle to traffic and therefore to parking will kill the businesses that are there.

It also makes no sense in terms of drawing more people. The Circle is full of people almost all the time. Even on Sundays when there are very few business reasons to be there, people are all over the place. Sitting on the Monument, drinking their Starbucks, eating their burritos.

Given its popularity already as a pedestrian hangout, we gain nothing from making it a pedestrian mall. That is such a tired idea already. It was tried all over the state in the 70s and 80s and it virtually killed downtown areas like the one in Richmond, Indiana. Pedestrian malls are a failed revitalization tool. And Monument Circle doesn't need revitalization.

The Circle is already often closed for special events, which makes them seem very special indeed. The word "special" implies something that isn't ordinary. Making the Circle ordinary is the last thing we should be considering and closing it makes those special events not so special after all.

The Circle has been the heart of the city and part of what makes it so alive is the traffic that flows through it. People slowly driving around it get a gander at that extraordinary exclamation point at the center of an old city plan. And the Circle's history is that it has always been used for vehicular traffic, as well as pedestrian activity.

When I heard about this lamebrained idea it made me remember a meeting I attended when I was heading up the Mass Ave Merchants Association about 10 years ago. This was a meeting for the Indianapolis Downtown Inc. Marketing Board. At that time, the board included managers from all the downtown hotels, a representative from IUPUI, people from the Dept. of Metropolitan Development, folks from the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Bureau, downtown realtors and others who were busy trying to sell Indianapolis as a destination.

At this particular meeting Kurt Flock, a downtown real estate agent, asked the members of the board how many lived downtown. Out of probably 50 people making their livings promoting downtown, 4 of us (including Kurt and me) lifted our hands in answer to that question. Kurt then asked: "what would it take to get the rest of you to move here?" The first answer was the most memorable. It came from a representative of the ICVA: "cul de sacs."

Well, here we are making a cul de sac out of the Circle. So I guess he's getting his wish.

People, cul de sacs belong in the suburbs not in the center of our urban city. Until the people who market our city get that idea into their suburban brains I guess we'll continue to see these suburban planning notions creeping into the city center. Pretty soon we'll be an extension of Carmel and Zionsville, Greenwood and Brownsburg.

Then I'll be moving to a city.

New Harmony, Evans Woollen and Architecture

Last week the annual Indiana preserva-tion conference, with the new name of Preserving Historic Places, took place in New Harmony, Indiana. I have an incredible fondness for New Harmony. The site of two failed 19th Century Utopian communities, it is very close to an architectural Utopia with amazing buildngs from the 1810s to the 1990s. The Rappite architecture beginning in 1815 includes lovely log cabins with innovative insulation and air lock entries to keep the cold Indiana winds from blowing into the houses. Their brick community buildings are resplendent.

The residential buildings of the Owenite years, and the grand Workingman's Institute and Thrall's Opera House, are equally beautiful. And the Victorian era, after the Utopian failures, was also kind to this small town, leaving grand and modest homes and a beautiful downtown commercial area.

Even tiny infill ranches from the 1950s are sweet in New Harmony. Mid-Century Modern has a small voice, as well.


Then Jane Owen, starting in the 1970s has given us the Richard Meier Athenaeum, a building memorable enough to be listed on Meier's biography, and the Philip Johnson Roofless Church. Proclaimed by Johnson protege, Dean of the School of Architecture at University of Houston---and soon to be New Harmony resident---Joe Mashburn,`to be one of Johnson's best buildings.

The town amazes me and is reason enough for a visit. But there was so much more.

Included in the offerings for the conference was a talk by Bernhard Karpf,associate partner of Richard Meier & Partners, about the Athenaeum.

But the two star performances of the conference were the panel discussion by Joe Mashburn, Bernhard Karpf and Evans Woollen and, of course, the keynote address by Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for the New Yorker. I may talk about Goldberger some other time. For me the funnest moment came in the panel discussion with Mashburn, Woollen and Karpf (that's Woollen in the center of the picture).

After brief introductions, and a few planned questions the moderator turned the questioning over to the crowd. I screwed up my courage and asked the last question of the day:

"Richard Meier said that light is one of his favorite building materials. If each of you had to come up with one sentence like that to describe your own work, what would you say?"

Berhard Karpf punted on this question, claiming to not have much architecture to draw conclusions from. Mashburn said that he and his partner (his wife) relied on the power of the landscape to shape their thoughts about what should be built. And Karpf made the intersting point that well-known architects all possess one similar trait, which is that they "are all good marketers." They know how to talk about their work in order to get other people talking about and appreciating it. He also confessed that he didn't really appreciate Philip Johnson's work. [perhaps a bit snarky considering the company]

But the big payoff was getting this answer from the leprechaunish Evans Woollen, one of my Indianapolis architect heroes:

"For me, every building is a whole new venture into a different context, different community. My buildings are crazily different from each other. I've been criticized for that but it's not an accident. My buildings are purposely inconsistent." Woollen used the New Harmony Inn as an example. He built that building to blend into the landscape. It was not intended to stand out and compete but to harmonize with New Harmony. And that it does. And there's a little insight into an interesting modernist architect's brain.