Cyclorama Center on the battlefield at Gettysburg

Last Updated: March 2, 2010

• Post a Comments (0)
• Share
• RSS Feed

Dear Will:

You may know that my father, Richard Neutra was one of the only Southern California architects to receive the Gold Medal up to the 70s. One of his most important achievements in 1962, was the construction of the Cyclorama Center on the battlefield at Gettysburg, which he characterized as 'The Shrine of the Nation' because he felt the commemoration of Lincoln's Address was equally important to memorialize along with the battle and its implications. (the 'address' was uttered no more than 200 yds from our site). I was project architect on that project, and as such, have an emotional attachment to it. I also happen to believe it is one of our best commissions of our 85 year practice, in the way it responded to its program and context.

I've been leading the fight to save it for the past dozen years, once the Park Service decided its current staff knew better where this building should have been sited, than their predecessors who actually directed us where to place the building. Their position was/is that this part of the battlefield would be bettered by the removal of this intrusion, even tho this would be a devastating shock to Ziegler's Wood, which has, in the past 50 years, enveloped our building, shielding it from view from most vantage points. No one speaks of the enormous cost to jack hammer this concrete building, placing an incredible burden on some landfill somewhere, not to speak of how long it will take for this wood to grow back from seedlings. What a way to achieve a LEED rating, right?

Ironically, for not much more than what it will cost to demo this building, haul the debris, and replant the wood, one could repurpose our building to 'The Lincoln Museum at Gettysburg', bringing it back to one of its original purposes; annual commemoration of the address.

If the plan including removal of the adjacent highway with its fast food and motel development in full view of all this, one might be able to see why removal of our building could change the 'look' around this part of the battlefield. This, however, is not the plan! So how to justify removal of just this one intrusion to achieve the stated result?

Without forming a committee and going through a lot of 'stuff' could LA AIA by acclamation go on record and sign our petitions supporting a Presidential Pardon for this building, and its repurposing with a suitable $25M Federal budget allocation?

I'm just too busy to get involved with having to make personal presentations and forming committees here. It should be clear that this national register listed building, designed by a former chapter member and gold medalist, should be saved, rather than have to undergo yet another round of hand wringing and anguishing about loss of important modern icons of our time because of inaction at this point. This happened with the last important of our projects to be bulldozed in 2002, when the Maslon House in Rancho Mirage was lost this way. This made the national news in all important media at the time, and resulted in a new policy put in place in the desert.

I'm just now also struggling to avoid a similar fate for our most important medical offices complex, built in Newport Beach. Also in '02, the OCAIA declared it the winner of its 25 year award. There, the owner developer wants to overwhelm it with a multistory block in the parking lot, which will inevitably lead to it eventual destruction.

Can you run this by the powers that be and see what the feeling is? We have over 5000 signatures on a series of petitions over three administrations. So far have been unable to penetrate to where the president has even been made aware of the plan. Sure could use some help figuring out how to pierce that firewall! I'll attach an image of how the building looked in its heyday. Check out our website for how to view signatures on the current petition and hopefully sign it in the name of the chapter.

The best of all worlds could be a direct letter on Chapter Letterhead directed to President Obama, entreating him to get with this program, pardon the building and get a repurposing effort started to save this monument in place. Following that will be the challenge to figure out how to get this on some list of items for him to address as soon as possible. Hopefuly by next November, the 147th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, or before, the President could appear on site and make his announcement about a new life for this icon.

Can you help?

Dion

Dion Neutra, architect AIA, FISD,
Dion Neutra, Inc. aka Richard and Dion Neutra, Architects and Associates
2440 Neutra Place
Los Angeles, CA. 90039
Phone/Fax: 323 666 1806
Website: www.neutra.org
E-mail:

0 Comments