Three Beauties (Page 1 of 2)

Hollywood Boulevard, the main street of the movie capitol, is lined with theaters. Like most built in the 1920s, these had large marquees, canopies that doubled as billboards for the show and shelter for the crowds buying tickets and waiting to enter. The marquees in place today are not the originals, but replacements from the 1950s, replete with flashing neon, animated incandescents and giant plastic letters, all intended to capture the attention of passing motorists and pedestrians at a time when movie attendance was flagging. Anachronistic in an electronic age, these garish artifacts have been meticulously preserved as historic relics of the period in which they were built.

The issues of what is good architecture, what is historic and what should be saved confront historians, preservationists, building owners and city officials throughout the country. Costs versus benefits are considered, and politics, as usual, enter into the decision process. The first step is to educate the public to the presence of buildings that may not be very old but are unique in some distinguished — or distinguishable — way. Some buildings might go unnoticed and others, like Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York, become subjects of derision before their value is recognized. There are many local examples of last-century beauties I'd put high on my must-see, if not must-save list. Here are three of them:

Rich’s Department Store

Rich's Department Store, later known as Miller's, and now the UT Conference Center, is a big box in the truest sense of the term, occupying a full city block between Locust and Henley streets and Church and Cumberland avenues. Completed in 1955, it was Rich's first retail venture outside its home city of Atlanta. The building, designed by Atlanta architects Stevens and Wilkinson in association with industrial designer Raymond Loewy (best known for the Coca-Cola bottle and Studebaker automobiles), was recipient of an American Institute of Architects Merit Award in 1957. The east and west façades feature green glazed tile, tinted glass, porcelain trim and undulating concrete entry canopies, and the north and south façades are surfaced in red glazed brick, punctuated by shaded display windows that liven the sidewalk. This particular aesthetic, developed in Europe in the 1920s, was refined by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen for his General Motors Technical Center near Detroit. The premise is building materials, properly chosen and simply applied, could provide an outer skin that is both decorative and functional, with an intrinsic ability to keep itself clean.

In a reversal of its expansion policy, Rich's sold the building to locally owned Miller's. It continued its life as a department store until 1992 when it was sold to the University of Tennessee. The open interior spaces were then carved up into offices and meeting rooms, but the striking façades remain mostly intact. The building was included in Knox Heritage's "Fragile 15" list of 2007 because of a need for exterior maintenance and recurring threats to redevelop the site.

Lawson-McGhee Library

Perhaps my favorite building downtown is the Lawson McGhee Library, not just for its looks, but because it's the one I've used the most. Completed in 1970, it was designed by Bruce McCarty and Associates before McCarty formed the partnership that produced the master plan (and a few of the buildings) for the 1982 World's Fair. Like so many of its contemporaries, the library has an exposed, reinforced concrete frame and generous use of glass, brick, stone and wood that make the interior a wonderful place to read, research and retreat from the outside world. The children's library is located in the basement but open to natural light brought in through a sunken courtyard below the level of the sidewalk, allowing the kids to watch the pedestrians and vice versa. The main reading room has two-story-high, north-facing windows and a mezzanine that contains the media collection. Everything seems in its place, grand but intimate, just as it should in a good building.

There's never enough room for the computers, though, which find their way into the least appropriate places, pushing out armchairs and reading tables in their hegemonic quest for space. The original plan provided for the library's expansion on the site next door, now the parking lot for the Duncan Federal Building. With security a concern, it is unlikely the Feds will surrender their occupied territory, so the library has been looking at alternatives for several years. If that means the abandonment of their current home, I selfishly hope they won't find one.