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Return to: Documents Determining Significance | Timeline of Events National Park
Service Determination of Eligibility Notification for the Cyclorama
Building, National Register of Historic Places The Cyclorama Building is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places for its exceptional historic and architectural significance under criteria A and C. Constructed in 1958 as part of the National Park Service's massive and influential Mission 66 program, the Cyclorama Building is one of only five of the newly conceived building type, the Visitor Center, designed for the National Park System by noted, world class architects. The Mission 66 program, a nearly billion dollar, ten year master planning and construction effort, was an exceptionally important undertaking in the history of conservation and the architecture of the National Park System. Designed to meet dramatically increased park visitation following World War II, and to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service in 1966, Mission 66 had a profound impact on the physical infrastructure of the National Parks. Envisioned as a bold and forward-looking initiative, Mission 66 adopted modernism as its creed. Reflecting a much more visitor-oriented management operation, the Mission 66 program conceived an innovative new building type--the Visitor Center--to centralize the management of visitors and interpretation of park resources. Strategically placed at centers of primary interest in parks and functioning as the hub of interpretive programs, visitor centers were collaborative designs of architects, landscape architects and museum specialists. Often, this collaboration involved professionals both within and outside the Service. Of the approximately 100 Visitor Centers built or converted from existing buildings (79 newly constructed, 21 refurbished) the National Park Service selected five parks to receive the services of acclaimed architects: * Gettysburg Visitor Center (Cyclorama Building) at Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, PA; Richard Neutra & Robert Alexander, Los Angeles, CA, architects, 1958. * Visitor Center,
Wright Brothers National Memorial, Cape Hatteras National Seashore,
Manteo, NC: Mitchel, Cunningham & Giurgola, architects, 1958. Listed
in the National Register as a contributing resource in the Wright Brothers
National Memorial nomination, 2/26/98. From his earlier work designing innovative international style residences in California to his later commissions on major public buildings such as the Cyclorama Building, the U.S. Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan, and the Los Angeles Hall of Records, Neutra is recognized as a master architect of Modern design by scholars in numerous publications. The recipient of many design awards and citations, in 1977 Neutra was posthumously honored by the American Institute of Architects, which awarded him its Gold Medal for lifetime achievement. While it is undebatable that Neutra has been highly and widely acclaimed for his earlier residential designs for some time, it is not unusual for the significance of his later work to be gaining attention with the passage of time. Scholars are now placing his later works too into the context of modern architecture of the period. As such, the Cyclorama Building is a rare example of Neutra's institutional design on the east coast and one of his very few Federal commissions. While not currently analyzed in detail in publications, it is one of a very few of his later works often mentioned or illustrated. Similarly, the evolving scholarship on the history and impact of the Mission 66 program on design in the parks clearly indicates the seminal importance of the visitor center as a building type and of the examples designed by master Modern architects mentioned above, including the Cyclorama Building.
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