Tag Archives: modern

Preserving the Modern in St. Louis

St. Louis, MO is home to several architectural gems from the mid-century modern era. The city recently conducted a property survey of over 2,000 non-residential buildings constructed between 1945 and 1970. The Cultural Resource Office of St. Louis is highlighting a selective survey & inventory of 200 significant properties with input from PMA and the public to help develope a master list of 25 of the most significant mid-century modern masterpieces. Surveying these architecturally significant structures gives a voice to a past era that still directly influences today. St. Louis’s built heritage from the mid-century modern era showcases structures from internationally recognized architects that revolutionized architecture and design throughout the 20th century.

A Legacy of Modern Architectural Design
The post-World War II era in the United States led to the development of the Modern Movement Architecture across urban areas. Contributing factors of this development included the impact of the auto industry on the built environment, a more cost-conscious public and government, and several technological advances. In addition to these factors, St. Louis was home to the prestigious school of architecture at Washington University. The school had diverse and international students and teachers that contributed to some of the most prolific designs of modern architecture.

When discussing St. Louis mid-century modern architectural design three architects stand out: W.A. Sarmiento, Gyo Obata, and Minoru Yamasaki. Their designs were sleek, yet whimsical, and made St. Louis globally recognized for its modern architectural designs.

W.A. Sarmiento design

W.A. Sarmiento is an internationally regarded architect who designed some of the most prolific buildings in the city of St. Louis. A native of Peru, Sarmiento began as a draftsman for Oscar Niemeyer. In 1952 he accepted a position with the Bank Building & Equipment Corporation. From 1952 through 1964, Sarmiento revolutionized the design and function of banking facilities. Ten years after working for the Bank Building & Equipment Corporation, Sarmiento left after J.B. Gander’s death and formed his own company. W.A. Sarmiento Architects expanded to included offices in St. Louis, Phoenix, and San Francisco. Sarmiento closed his practice in 1978 and left behind a legacy of modern architectural design including the saved American Automobile Association (AAA) Building (1976), the Chancery of the Archdiocese of St. Louis (1962), and the Jefferson Bank and Trust Building (1955).

St. Louis Science Center James S. McDonnell Planetarium (1963

The St. Louis Science Center James S. McDonnell Planetarium (1963), was designed by the local firm of Hellmuth, Obata, & Kassabaum (HOK), with Obata as lead designer. HOK was founded in 1955, and to this day is a global leader in architectural design. The practice began by designing schools in suburbs of St. Louis, and by the 1960s it a grown and began to open offices nationally, with their first international branch opening in 1984. Obata was the lead designer of the Saint Louis Science Center along with other notable St. Louis buildings. The building has a visually striking and expressive shape, somewhat reminiscent of a nuclear power plant tower. It is a thin concrete shell structure, hyperboloid in section. This architectural design is a premiere example of continuous contemporary design.

Lambert International Airport

Minoru Yamasaki’s domed design for Lambert’s main terminal became the forerunner of modern terminal building plans. In 1951, the firm of Hellmuth, Yamasaki, and Leinweber was commissioned to design and update the Lambert- St. Louis Municipal Airport. In 1956, their design was the first building in St. Louis to receive a National AIA Honor award. This building was originally composed of three vaults, with a forth added in 1965. Yamasaki’s design became a model for a new generation of airport terminals. Eero Saarinen’s designs for the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, and the Dulles Washington Airport terminal both echo the repetitive concrete vaults of Lambert St. Louis Municipal Airport.

STL MODERN logo PMAPDX For more information about this exciting project, including a list of buildings for intensive research, mid-century modern properties, city map with property locations, and property descriptions. Visit: Mid-Century Modern Survey

Written by Kate Kearney, Marketing Coordinator

Historic Preservation and New Construction in Historic Districts

Historic Districts are not frozen in time.
Ideally, Districts are busy, vital places where people live, work, socialize, and see community values reflected. Typically, buildings contribute to a district and share common characteristics becoming more historically valuable as a group than as individual properties. If we create, restore, and invest in Historic Districts, the Districts will continue to tell a story about a particular time period, a particular community, or perhaps a particular industry. So is new construction appropriate within a Historic District, and if so, how does one properly design and integrate the new building within the existing historic context? This posting will explore some factors and opinions on new construction in Historic Districts.
PMAPDX OSU Buildable Landarea
Some individuals argue that appropriate infill must be visually identical to nearby historic resources. Most architects in practice today have a condescending reaction against recreating previous styles as making “faux” or “Disneyland” architecture, even though western architecture for hundreds of years has recycled various stylistic revivals. It is not an absurd concept to design and build beautiful, high-quality buildings that reflect an older style and method of construction. Other individuals have no trouble placing a contemporary structure next to older structures, since modern buildings have a responsibility to reflect our shared culture and lifestyle.

Neither of these absolutes works for most situations. New buildings, as stated in the Secretary of the Interior Standards, do need to be “differentiated” from contributing buildings in a District to avoid a false sense of history. The question is how much differentiation is required? Though there are cases where a “missing tooth” in a very cohesive pattern of buildings should be constructed to resemble its historic neighbors, in other cases the visual diversity of architectural styles and periods within a District allows for more flexibility in differentiating new buildings. Historic Districts are listed on the National Register because they possess a concentration of buildings that are linked either historically, aesthetically, or both. One Historic District might represent a fairly large span of time, various architectural types and styles, and a number of different uses. Another District might be much more specific in its focus.

Opsis Architecture for OSU

As Preservationists and Architects, we need to analyze the characteristics and contexts that are the same and the characteristics and contexts that are different about the resources within the District. Each case is unique and site-dependent. It is possible to allow for stylistic additions and change without showcasing the change; to temper the inclination to design an individually iconic building; and to limit a modern “intrusion” so as to respect and highlight the older buildings. Good design, high-quality detailing, and high quality materials contribute towards compatibility, and adaptive reuse and change is inevitable to the vitality of a Historic District.

Each jurisdiction having authority makes its own interpretation of what it means to be compatible. One recent example is an approval by the Historic Resources Commission (HRC) in Corvallis, Oregon. The Corvallis HRC approved a design for a freestanding metal and glass canopy in the heart of the national registered Oregon State University Historic District. The HRC concluded that there was no historic precedent for a freestanding non-building element, but found that the canopy was visually light and well-designed and fit into the open space pattern of development without detracting from the neighboring Contributing resources. The role of the historic consultant in this case was to construct an argument as to why the canopy was compatible in the District, and push back against earlier suggestions that the canopy become more “building-like” with masonry columns. An open structure with a veneer of building material would have created a less compatible design.

Opsis Architecture Canopy design for OSU

Each proposal for new construction in a Historic District should be informed by its context. There is latitude for new construction to be distinct, as long as the new work does not detract from the surrounding historic resources.

Written by Kristen Minor, Preservation Planner

Surveying Modern Resources in Portland’s Central City

“Modern” is not traditionally part of a historic preservationist’s vocabulary, but as time rolls on, modern resources have become notable for their architectural significance, construction technologies, and association with significant social patterns that define national, state, and local history.

During Summer 2011, Peter Meijer Architect, PC (PMA) performed a reconnaissance level survey of modern historic resources in Portland’s Central City. The work was completed for the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to dovetail with the Bureau’s Central City 2035 Plan. For this survey the modern period is defined as 1945-1985, beginning with Post-World War II development and ending when all Modern era properties will be at least fifty-years in age when the Central City plan is fully realized in 2035.

PMAPDX Survey of PDX Many of Portland’s iconic landmark buildings are modern era resources, such as the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Lloyd Center Mall, U.S. Bancorp tower, and the Portland Building. The survey intentionally excludes these well-known properties in order to highlight broader architectural patterns and identify some of the less prominent buildings that may be considered historically significant in the future.

PMAPDX PDX survey modern resource Of approximately 976 modern period resources within the Central City’s seven geographic clusters, PMA selected 152 properties for reconnaissance level survey. Representation of geographic clusters, resource typologies, and
potential eligibility were considered when selecting properties to survey. In a selective survey, most properties should be considered potentially eligible for historic designation. Online maps, tax assessor information, and Google Earth were used to inform the selection process. Fieldwork involved taking photographs of each property, recording the resource type, cladding materials, style, height, plan type, and auxiliary resources, and then making a preliminary determination of National Register eligibility based on age, integrity, and historic character-defining features. A final report outlines the project and findings, and survey data was added to the Oregon Historic Sites database.

Historic photo of East Burnside & Sandy Drive-In

Mod-toids: Some interesting modern survey findings:
• Glass and metal curtain wall, roman brick, and various treatments of concrete (block, poured, panels are the most common exterior materials found on Modern Period buildings.
• No single-family residential units were constructed in the Central City during the modern period.
• Small industrial buildings, including warehouses and service bay resources, are found in every cluster of the Central City. These building types have highly adaptable plan types and their size, character, and location make them ripe opportunities for redevelopment as industrial needs change.
• Modern period transportation developments, such as freeways and bridges, have greatly impacted the Central City urban landscape. Many of the Central City clusters are geographically defined by transportation developments. Larger modern resource types tend to be more concentrated near freeways and freeway entrances.

Written by PMA preservation staff.

Mid-Century Arenas: Memorial Coliseum

Mid-Century Arenas
The emerging interdisciplinary field of Arena Studies focuses on the dwindling global supply of modernist multipurpose arenas—an overlooked subject spanning the fields of historic preservation, architecture, architectural history, engineering, preservation technology, industrial archeology, urban studies, city and regional planning, landscape planning and environmental history.
Veterans Memorial Coliseum Exterior
After World War II, arena builders began to utilize a variety of new technologies and modern building materials to enclose large-scale urban, suburban and rural arenas. Innovative technologies (such as retractable roofs, glass curtain walls and clear-span timber domes) were combined with cutting-edge craftsmanship to create a revolutionary new aesthetic of form-altering functionalism. As an emerging field of study, the topic of historic arenas currently suffers from a dearth of scholarly research, resulting in typological confusion. General and pervasive misidentification and misclassification has greatly hindered the efforts of conservationists to rehabilitate, restore and repurpose these undervalued community resources.

Case Study – Memorial Coliseum
When completed in 1960, Memorial Coliseum, a flat-roofed square “box,” measuring 360 linear feet per side, 100 feet in height, and part of a larger 30- acre area, was a technological feat of engineering and operation unrivaled by any other large civic structure and a fully-articulated example of lnternational-Style Modernism. The building is the only large-scale public arena glass-walled structure of the mid-century retaining its original design, materials, workmanship, highly urban context, and original relationship to nearby geographic features such as the Willamette River.
Veterans Memorial Coliseum Interior
The Coliseum’s weight is supported by four cruciform-shaped, 7O-foot high reinforced concrete columns, 240 feet apart in one direction and 270 feet in the other. At the column pinnacle, “steel hemispheres,” the first use in arena construction, support the steel roof trusses. These half-round bearing points enable the entire structure to move under force, such as strong winds or earth movements. A prominent feature of the building is the oval, free-standing concrete seating bowl, visible from every exterior vantage point due to the building’s transparency giving rise to the nicknames “Glass Palace” and “Tea Cup in a Box.”

Photo courtesy of the City of Portland Archives.

Inflecting the conservation and re-use of public arenas is the political desire of the community and receptiveness of the team owner and manager. Many arenas were constructed with complicated financing and management agreements providing the sports organization authority over reuse, urban planning, and demolition options. The single, sports purpose arenas require dramatic alterations to adopt the structure to reprogramming like housing, office, or entertainment. Early arenas are, however, established public structures in the heart of the urban fabric offering unique and profitable opportunities for long-term future success. A key element of successful conservation is an understanding of the adaptability of these structures in material composition, plan, and function. The architectural qualities combined with the urban settings provide mid-century arenas with enduring historic value.

Written by Peter Meijer AIA,NCARB, Principal. A special thank you to Matthew Hayes for contributing to this posting.