This doesn't have a _lot_ of relevance for our local Historic District
issues, but it's an interesting item.
http://www.plastic.com/article.html?sid=02/11/15/22132665;cmt=3
Some Preservationists Back Modernism
Wed Nov 13, 3:43 PM ET
/By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press Writer/
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - For sightseers who visit Savannah to lose
themselves in the 19th-century ambiance of antebellum mansions and
oak-shaded squares, Drayton Tower packs a jolt.
Photo
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AP Photo
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Rising above its red-brick and wrought-iron surroundings, the 12-story
concrete box with ribbons of green windows stands out like a steering
wheel on a horse-drawn carriage.
Drayton Tower was billed as "ultramodern" when it opened in 1951. It had
heat-absorbing windows and faucets that dispensed ice water. Unlike any
other apartment building in Georgia, it had central air conditioning.
Its culture-clash design, now marred by soot stains and cracked windows,
makes it a building Savannahians love to hate. Many call it an eyesore
that detracts from the city's Old South charm.
But Drayton Tower now has something in common with its older neighbors:
The city declared in August that at 51 years old, the tower is a
historic building.
"Absurd," says Lee Adler, one of Savannah's preservation leaders.
"We were looking down on that very ugly building and wishing that it
could be imploded," adds Adler's wife, Emma.
The Drayton Tower case is part of one of the hottest debates in historic
preservation: How much of postwar modernism is worth saving?
The bold shift in architecture after World War II favored stark, boxy
facades of unadorned raw materials. Half a century later, many consider
them positively ugly.
But more preservationists are taking up modernism's cause for what it
tells us about American life in the 1950s — a time when people looked
optimistically to the future, constructing buildings that looked ahead
of their time.
To gauge modernism's worth by today's standards of taste is
wrong-headed, says Wendy Nicholas, Northeast director of the National
Trust for Historic Preservation.
"People of my parents' generation just railed against Victorian
buildings as ugly, not worth saving," Nicholas says.
New York's Lever House, a 1952 skyscraper of stainless steel and glass,
was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
As more modern buildings reach their 50th birthday — generally the
minimum age for historic status — preservationists face the irony of
saving architecture their movement once considered its enemy.
"Many, many people became historic preservationists out of their hatred
of modern design," says Diane Wray, a Colorado preservation consultant
who has fought to save modernist buildings.
The National Trust has also taken up modernism's cause. Two modernist
buildings made its list of this year's 11 most endangered historic places:
_ The 1958 Gold Dome Bank in Oklahoma City, which is topped with a
geodesic dome 150 feet in diameter. It needs $1.7 million in repairs.
Its owner, Bank One, wants to demolish the building rather than restore it.
_ Minneapolis's 1963 Guthrie Theater, one of America's oldest repertory
theaters outside Broadway. The Walker Art Center, which owns the
Guthrie, wants to build a larger replacement.
When it opened in 1951, Drayton Tower was meant to be a signpost to
Savannah's future, a shining example of how technology made life easier
at a time when many homes still had outhouses.
Over the front doors jutted a canopy of reinforced concrete that seemed
to levitate 15 feet over the sidewalk. Elevators were self-service.
Bathrooms had an extra faucet for "running ice water."
"Savannahians never saw anything like it before," the Savannah Morning
News wrote on June 10, 1951.
But Drayton Tower is no longer upscale. Cheap rent makes it popular with
college students. Replaced windows do not match the original shade of green.
"It has to be the most reviled building in the city," says Robin
Williams (news
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head of the architectural history department at the Savannah College of
Art and Design.
Williams says Drayton Tower is important because it has retained
something prestigious cousins in New York and Chicago have lost — shock
value.
"You've got this stridently modern building" at the center of quaint
Savannah, Williams says. "It's a pure artistic statement, whether you
like that statement or not."
