 | The Cavalier daily Tuesday, February 13, 1973 |  |
Capitol Punishment
(The following editorial is reprinted by
permission from the Common wealth Times,
Virginia Common wealth University. While we
are not familiar enough with the facilities of
the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond to
endorse the editors opinion that it would
make the ideal solution to the shortage of
legislative office space, we agree with their
opposition to the plan presently under
consideration. –Ed.)
Richmond's "cityscape" has been the victim
of brutal sabotage over the past few years but
no scheme has ever been suggested as
audacious as the plan to set Thomas
Jefferson's statehouse atop a seven tier
wedding cake of office and parking space.
That a governing body, which owes its very
existence to the democratic principles
espoused and strengthened by
our third president and which
has the dual distinction of
governing from the halls of a
building designed by that same
Renaissance man of American
history, should even consider
such an idea makes the plan all
the more appalling.
The plan, stemming from a
"crash study" conducted by a
legislative commission and a
host of consultant architects,
would utilize strip mining
techniques to tear away the
hillside which slopes southward from the
capitol, and leave in its place an overwhelming
super structure reminiscent of the
architecture of Fascist Italy. True, the
legislature is in dire need of office space, and
parking is at a premium, but a more costly or
indelicate plan could hardly have been
conceived as a more appropriate means to
dishonor Mr. Jefferson and deface downtown
Richmond.
The objections are obvious. In an era
where interest in the environment and the
improvement of urban living spaces is at the
top of human domestic priorities (if not
federal priorities) it is foolish to strip
Richmond of a piece of urban parkland which
is among the most beautiful in the country.
Thousands of tourists stroll the grounds
annually and the 9-5 downtown work crew
finds respite from their sterile offices for a
lunch hour with the squirrels, azaleas, and
Victorian fountains.
The architectural scheme for the building
is ugly, insensitive to the original building,
a dreary place in which to work.
In the capitol plan cold sheet marble
would evolve up the terraces until only a few
offices could see the light of day.
Internationally renowned architect Louis
Kahn, in speaking to an audience on campus
in October, addressed his remarks to the
necessity for light in all buildings. "Every
room must have natural light which
constantly changes the mood of the space.
Controlled light such as electricity has no
mood...experiences such as witnessing the
changing seasons or gentle raindrops on glass
are inseparable from the total human
experience."
If institutional architecture has been guilty
of anything over the past half century, it
would be having cut man off from nature and
reducing his working environment into
inhuman isolation.
Proponents of the plan who have suggested
that Mr. Jefferson, who designed the Capitol
while ambassador to France, would have
approved its expansion have got to be
kidding. Now we are not presumptuous
enough to suggest what the Capitol's architect
would or would not have approved, but the
evidence is clear. Jefferson loved natural
hillsides and all his major architectural
projects included sloping terrain. Monticello,
his Charlottesville home is set atop a beautiful
mountain which inspired the name.
(While president, Jefferson, who loved his
Piedmont, could not abide the marshy
Washington flatlands. It is an obscure fact of
American history that tons of topsoil were
mounds were constructed encircling the
elliptical South Lawn.)
The expense of the scheme should induce
a response from those who are not affected
by the aesthetics of the situation.
Construction which involves massive
excavation is the costliest type of
construction possible. Boston, Massachusetts
has never recovered from the cost, or scandal,
involved in its building of a parking garage
beneath a portion of its historic Boston
Common.
Governmental construction costs have
continued to spiral upwards. The $32 million
price tag is just the beginning! Construction
costs can never be accurately estimated with
the reality of inflation and possible
shut-downs. And how can one be sure what
engineering hassles lay beneath the emerald
Capitol Square?
The planning group has acted as if
Richmond were Gotham City itself, with no
place to expand. They have stubbornly
persisted with their plan in full
knowledge that numerous
other possible construction
sites are crying out for
development. There is ample
space north of Broad Street in
the area surrounding the
Coliseum. The area from Main
Street to the James River looks
as if it had been devastated by
a nuclear bomb and could also
use a major building project of
this sort.
But the most practical solution of all has
been the suggestion that the Federal Reserve
building across from Sixth Street be
converted to state offices when the bank
moves down the hill in a few years to its new
river front headquarters. The state has already
adopted such fine buildings as the Richmond
Hotel for state purposes and has purchased
the Life of Virginia Building on Capitol
Street. The Federal Reserve Bank is a
practical and good answer.
For a legislature as steeped in tradition and
as free from corruption as that of Virginia, to
continue discussion of a plan to desecrate a
plot of land symbolically the heart of the
state for so pretentious and unnecessary a
structure would be worse than foolhardy. It
would be decadence.
| The Cavalier daily Tuesday, February 13, 1973 | |