The Cyclorama Building at Gettysburg National Battlefield Park is nationally significant on several, interrelated grounds. It stands among the pioneering examples of visitor centers constructed by the National Park Service in order to bring a new level of interpretation to its national parks and ranks among the most ambitious as well as most distinctive examples of its type in the post-World War II era. The building not only represents a major program to render one of the nation's premier battlefield sites more comprehensible, it stands as the most significant addition to that battlefield's landscape since the early twentieth century and embodies poignant views of the lessons to be learned from that epic confrontation and its aftermath during the Cold War. The building is also one of the most sophisticated, fully developed examples outside the residential sphere of the work of Richard Neutra, an international leader in modern architecture during the twentieth century and among the definers of modernism in the United States for over three decades. Finally, the Cyclorama Building ranks with a handful of others as a work of exceptional modernist design commissioned in the United States by federal agencies during the post-World War II era.

A new visitor facility for Gettysburg National Military Park was conceived as early as the 1940s, but did not begin to be pursued in earnest until the inauguration of the National Park Service's Mission 66 program in 1955. Less than two years later preliminary studies were made by the Park Service. The Los Angeles architectural firm of Neutra & Alexander received the commission for the project in 1958. The design stage lasted until the mid months of 1959. Construction began that November. The building was largely completed by the end of 1961 and was officially dedicated the following November on the 99th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. The building housed park administrative offices, a library, visitor information services, a museum, a 200-seat auditorium (for introductory presentations and special events), a rostrum facing the auditorium and an open-air seating area, and a gallery for the enormous cyclorama painting by Paul Philippoteaux (1884). The facility was called the Gettysburg Visitor Center-Cyclorama Building until 1974, when most orientation and museum functions were moved to the nearby Rosensteel Building, acquired from the private sector to meet far higher levels of visitation that the Neutra building could accommodate. Thenceforth, the Neutra building became known as the Cyclorama Center. Throughout the nomination text it is referred to simply as the Cyclorama Building to avoid confusion with the current Visitor Center.

The period of significance extends from the finalization of the building's design in 1959 to 1974. The Cyclorama Building served as the primary point of visitor contact at Gettysburg National Military Park from its completion in 1962 through 1974, when the newly acquired Rosensteel Building became the Visitor Center. The Cyclorama Building has continued to serve as an important public and administrative facility for the park, but without physical changes or events that add to its historical significance.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF MISSION 66 AND VISITOR CENTER CONCEPT

The Cyclorama Building is one of 107 visitor centers designed and built by the National Park Service under the Mission 66 program. Conrad Wirth, Director of the Park Service from 1951 to 1964, proposed the ten-year project to regenerate and modernize the national parks in preparation for the fiftieth anniversary of the agency in 1966. The concept of the visitor center as a building type developed during Mission 66, as park administrators sought to re-conceptualize the form and function of outdated facilities from the 1930s, the better to serve and educate the public. The new "visitor center" not only provided spaces for interpretive programs, offices and visitor services, but also symbolized a renaissance in the stewardship of the national parks.

The development of the visitor center concept under Mission 66 changed the nature of public buildings in the national parks. The forward-looking spirit of the program, encompassing new interpretive goals and an increased focus on public service, also embraced a different aesthetic expression than the reserved, historicizing character favored during the previous building period in the parks. Mission 66 buildings conveyed a bolder modernist aesthetic to entice visitors. Prominently sited at the major entry or other strategic points, the buildings became an instantly recognized feature of the parks, signifying public service and affording a range of amenities. Modern materials and design characterized the new park architecture, with open interior spaces and expansive areas of glazing to provide views of nearby natural and cultural resources. The strikingly contemporary buildings in the parks symbolized, for the visiting public and the agency itself, the achievements of the Mission 66 program and a new era for the National Park Service.

Mission 66 is the largest program for park improvements and expansion ever initiated by the Park Service and is one of the most significant federally-sponsored post-World War II national building projects. By 1966 the nearly billion-dollar enterprise had produced 107 visitor centers, 221 administrative buildings, 36 service buildings, 1,239 units for employee housing, and 584 comfort stations. The Park Service acquired 78 additional park units under the program, an increase of almost 40 percent over the 180 parks held in 1956. Through boundary revisions, purchases of private in-holdings, and the addition of new parks, land owned by the National Park Service under the federal government increased by 1,653,000 acres.

The development of the Mission 66 visitor centers is best understood within the context of post-World War II tourism trends and changing Park Service ideologies of interpretation and resource management. From its origins in the early twentieth century until the development of Mission 66, the Park Service relied on residential-scale administration buildings to provide information to visitors. Private concessionaires in the parks supplied most of the public facilities and services, including hotels, restaurants, and guided tours. After World War II a sharp rise in visitation overwhelmed the existing infrastructure, placing natural and cultural resources at risk from overuse and mistreatment. In 1945, 11.7 million people visited the national parks. Just one year later 21.7 million people arrived, and in 1949 visitors numbered 31.7 million people. In 1956, the parks marked a record 46.2 million visits, a rise of 24.5 million in only 8 years. The increased need for education, orientation, and management of tourist activities at the national parks led the Park Service to develop the concept of centralized visitor centers built and maintained by the federal government.

Despite an exponential increase in visitation, the Park Service network of buildings and roads remained virtually unchanged since the CCC era. Although the rustic structures of previous decades represented vast improvements over previous park conditions, they could not handle the numbers of visitors arriving by the 1950s. The overuse of a deteriorating and outdated infrastructure in the parks resulted in injuries, complaints, damage to the parks, and a frequently unpleasant experience for tourists. Popular journals of the period chronicled the deterioration of the park system and called for increased spending on improvements. In a 1955 article entitled "The Shocking Truth About Our National Parks," Readers Digest warned would-be tourists that "your trip is likely to be fraught with discomfort, disappointment, even danger."

In 1955, responding to mounting political and public pressure, Wirth proposed a ten-year building improvement program to regenerate and modernize the national parks. The completion of the program coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Park Service in 1966, when park sites expected to register eighty million visitors. Wirth presented his ideas to Park Service administrators who enthusiastically accepted the plan. A head committee, later called the Mission 66 Committee, and a separate Steering Committee were established to draw up the details of the program for presentation to Congress.

Symbolically, the Mission 66 and Steering committees agreed upon the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the National Park Service in 1966 as a fitting conclusion to the ten-year improvement program. With the goal-oriented ideology of the project in mind and the proposed date of completion set, the committees chose the name "Mission 66" for the program. The purposes and intentions of the program were outlined in an introductory memo:

The purpose of MISSION 66 is to make an intensive study of the problems of protection, public use, interpretation, development, staffing, legislation, financing, and all other phases of park operation, and to produce a comprehensive and integrated program of use and protection that is in harmony with the obligations of the National Park Service under the Act of 1916.

On 2 February 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower submitted a letter to Congress promoting the new program. As owner of a farm bordering the Gettysburg battlefield, he had firsthand appreciation of the declining state of the national parks. Eisenhower advocated "vigorous action" for "protection, development, and staffing which can begin immediately."

By the close of Mission 66 ten years later, the Park Service had not only greatly improved facilities in existing parks, but had added 70 new areas to the park system. Historic cultural site acquisitions outnumbered natural area gains by nearly two to one during this period. The emphasis on conservation of cultural resources, such as birthplace homes and residences of American artists, inventors, and political leaders, or early industrial and transportation landmarks, reflected a desire to protect culturally important sites as well as natural landscapes.

The acquisition of varied cultural sites with no single theme justified, in part, the abandonment of the established aesthetic for park structures. The modern forms of the Mission 66 visitor centers distinctively contrasted with the rustic, historicizing character of the CCC buildings. The wooden lodge or adobe house may have related well to the wild environments of the western parks, but were poorly suited to urban, industrial, or battlefield settings, which comprised nearly two-thirds of all areas held by the Park Service in 1958.

Mission 66 designers and planners set about introducing a new kind of architecture as part of what was seen as a modernization program for the parks. The task promised to "test their abilities and convictions," according to one architectural journal. For each visitor center, the architect had to address primary functional purposes, respect existing park resources, and develop an easily recognizable form emblematic of a public building and the new image of the Park Service. Critics hoped for a "more imaginative architecture" and called upon architects to "enlarge the vision" of park buildings.

Park planners first articulated their vision for the Mission 66 visitor centers in a 120-page outline and prospectus, dated January 1956. The report identified the visitor center as "the hub of the park interpretive program," staffed by "trained personnel... [to] help visitors understand the meaning of the park and its features, and how best to protect, use, and appreciate them." The Park Service hoped that the expanded orientation and education program would reduce reported vandalism and overuse in the parks. As part of the effort to "help the visitor see the park and enjoy to the fullest extent what it has to offer," the construction of visitor centers was seen as "one of the most pressing needs for each area."

Three basic design features distinguish the Mission 66 visitor center building program from CCC-era structures: the centralized location near visitor congregation points, the expansion of interpretive programs located at the building, and the use of modern form and materials referencing the historical or cultural context of the park while expressing the "forward-looking" approach of Mission 66.

The visitor center designs incorporated a series of service-oriented spaces, but no one standard prevailed throughout the system. While the resulting form and building materials varied dramatically, each visitor center was expected to provide "all the aids and helps necessary to get the visitor off to a good start," including "information about accommodations, services, routes of travel, and park regulations." Other services included public telephones -- especially important in isolated areas -- and clean indoor restrooms, a feature considered to be "an essential part of each visitor center." The visitor could obtain brochures and maps at the center, view exhibits relating the story of the park and participate in ranger-led programs interpreting the park's resources. Many visitor centers also included offices, a library, and an auditorium.

The Cyclorama Building was one of the largest and most ambitious of the new visitor facilities constructed as part of the Mission 66 program. The need to house and suitably present Philippoteaux's painting was a central reason for this stature, but so too was the historical importance of the park -- one of the most significant battlegrounds in the United States -- and the large number of visitors it attracted. Park Service leaders wanted the facility to be a showpiece for Mission 66, for the battlefields, and for the agency itself. Beyond official statements touting its distinction, the intent is evident in the fact that one of the nation's foremost designers, whose offices were far removed from the site and from the regional and national Park Service headquarters, was secured to provide the plans and supervise construction. Many of the visitor centers and other buildings constructed as part of Mission 66 were designed by Park Service staff. Many others were contracted with private-sector architectural firms located relatively close to the site. While a number of these firms enjoyed a degree of local prominence, almost none developed the reputation for internationally-recognized designs that the Neutra firm had earned. Besides Neutra, the most distinguished firms involved were Anshen & Allen of San Francisco (Quarry Visitor Center, Dinosaur National Monument, Jensen, Utah, 1957-1958; and Lodgepole Visitor Center, Sequoia National Park, Three Rivers, California, 1963-1966), Mitchell/Giurgola (then Mitchell, Cunningham & Giurgola) of Philadelphia (Wright Brothers National Memorial Visitor Center, Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, 1958-1960), and Taliesin Associated Architects of Spring Green, Wisconsin, and Scottsdale, Arizona (Administration Building, Beaver Meadows Visitor Center, Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park, Colorado, 1965-1967). At the time of commissioning, the Neutra & Alexander office was the only one involved in Mission 66 to be widely recognized as a national leader.

Neutra's reputation appears to have been the central factor in the decision by Park Service officials to secure him for the job. He professed surprise at being selected; however, he may well have lobbied the Park Service for work, just as he did with other government agencies. He may also have been known to some of those involved with Mission 66 for his service as a design juror in the competition for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis a decade earlier. But none of these circumstances would have prompted Park Service officials to break from their prevailing practices on this one occasion and commission a famous architect whose offices lay across the continent unless they held the express aim of creating an exceptional building, one that would stand as the flagship of the program. In retrospect, too, only a few other Mission 66 projects such as that for the Wright Brothers Memorial possess attributes that approach the extraordinary ones of the Cyclorama Building.

BUILDING SIGNIFICANCE IN THE PARK

Besides its importance to the National Park system generally, the Cyclorama Building possesses considerable significance in relation to the development of the park at Gettysburg as a major destination. As visitation mounted after the war, many who were not well versed in the details of the battle reportedly were confused by what they saw and had difficulty understanding how commemorative and other elements that lined the park roadways related to the epic event itself. Park resources suffered from inadequate display and improper maintenance. The cyclorama painting depicted Philippoteaux's interpretation of the military action on the third day of the battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863. Measuring approximately 360 feet long and 26 feet high, the painting was displayed in a silo-like 1913 structure, which the Park Service acquired in 1941. The building was utilitarian in character, had no heat, and was poorly lighted. Park management offered no interpretive programs on the history of the artwork or the portion of the battle it depicted. In 1956 the park's historian noted:

There is urgent need for museum development at Gettysburg, especially for a building to properly house, preserve, and interpret the great cyclorama painting...and through the media of exhibits to better explain and interpret the events which happened here.

Commercial establishments filled the void created by the absence of Park Service facilities. Privately owned "museums," conspicuously located on major routes to the parks, provided visitors with curios and appealing, sometimes dubious, interpretations of park history. The Park Service maintained no control over these businesses or the information they passed on to the public. For many years, the "National Museum," prominently located near the park and marked by huge signs, attracted travelers who mistakenly thought it was a Park Service facility. One visitor wrote:

Following our road map which included a sectional map of the city of Gettysburg, we arrived at "The National Museum" expecting to find the usual high standards we’ve come to expect of fine National Park Service organization and preservation of treasured historical and natural wonders throughout the country. Imagine our reaction to find the ‘Museum’ to be privately owned and commercialized to the "nth" degree, in a manner totally unfitting to bear the ‘National’ title.

Park Service officials intended the Cyclorama Building to rectify the situation -- to offer a dignified and accurate interpretation that made the conflict comprehensible and bring life to the historic landscape. Well before the building was designed, its site was selected as the optimal one for achieving this objective. The location at the edge of Ziegler's Grove allowed the public to see the park from more or less the same vantage point that Philippoteaux had chosen for his cyclorama painting -- near the apex of the Union lines on Cemetery Ridge and the scene of George E. Pickett's infamous assault on the third, decisive, day. Furthermore, the site's elevation provided some of the best unobstructed views of the park as a whole. While placing the visitor center "right on top of the resource" runs counter to current practices within the agency, it was a carefully considered and strongly held position among Park Service leaders in the postwar era, including Ronald F. Lee and Roy Appleman, for enhancing the experience at Gettysburg and a number of other sites.

The architect took advantage of the location to dramatize visitor’s encounter with the site and with the presentation of history. Instead of the static composition conceived by Park Service planners in a preliminary scheme of 1957, the realized building possesses a dynamic relationship with the setting. Movement to and through the facility is circuitous rather than direct, composed purposely to enhance the drama of viewing the painting and experiencing the historic landscape beyond. An oblique and seemingly casual approach path leads to the lobby, which housed the original information center and has the most forthright arrangement in the sequence. The path to the viewing platform for the painting, on the other hand, is abrupt and unanticipated. From the rationally organized, light-filled lobby, movement is through a relatively narrow and noticeably dimmer passage to a circular museum, with exhibits set in the outer wall. In the middle of this seemingly subterranean space lies a complex interplay of concrete columns and aluminum tubes, which enframe the spiral ramp that leads to the viewing platform. The slight incline of the ramp and the progressively darker space it penetrates, combined with the cage-like character of the tubes that encircle it, further divorce the experience from the everyday world left behind. The painting is viewed not as in a museum but as in a theater. The space is mostly dark until visitors have arrived and a narrated sequence with light and sound begun. Following the presentation, visitors must partially retrace their steps, exiting to a glazed upper lobby, thence outside to a long, straight ramp from which the battlefield landscape unfolds. Both internal and external paths seek to engage the site as an integral part of the experience, providing a sense of immediacy as well as drama that could not be meaningfully duplicated elsewhere in the park. Much like the contemporary television documentary series narrated by Walter Cronkite, "You Are There," the arrangement facilitated interpretation by placing visitors in the center of the action. At the same time, in its form, space, and paths of movement, the building is far from a literal statement. With the exception of the painting and exhibits, the presentation is abstract, encompassing experiences that subtly echo the broad expanses and the hilly terrain of the battlefield.

At the time of its completion, the building was favorably received by the press and by park visitors. The New York Times reported:

The Times writer stated that with the help of a new "spacious and well-lighted" exhibit gallery and battlefield views from the observation deck, the new visitor center promised "to send the traveler home with a heightened sense of the fateful events that occurred during the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War." An article written one year later describing Centennial activities at the battlefield added:

Writing for the Washington Post two years later, the internationally renowned architecture critic, Wolf Von Eckardt, in a piece entitled "The Park Service Dares to Build Well," exclaimed that, "It is quite a surprise to find one of the most handsome modern buildings in this general area on, of all places, the Gettysburg battlefield." He praised the design for being " quietly monumental but entirely unsentimental," with its "big white cylinder, which resounds in the landscape like a sombre drum beat."

The Cyclorama Building was designed not just to house the painting, exhibits, and administrative offices, but also to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This function is accommodated in the most conspicuous part of the building, under the drum on the east side, contiguous to, but differentiated from, the museum. Here, there was no literal marking (the oversized bust of Lincoln is a later acquisition), but a flexible space and the most pronounced interplay in the entire scheme between indoors and out. Whereas the experience of the battle occurs in two distinct and emphatically different settings -- inside, a literalistic depiction of the past; outside, a pastoral presentation of the present -- this area manifests a sense of unity. Sliding glass and metal panels enable the lower section of the drum, the adjacent auditorium, and the exterior terrace and the lawn beyond to become a single space, all focusing on a rostrum. The intent was have a harmonious setting of natural and manmade components where leaders of international stature could pay tribute to the ideals embodied in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

As an immigrant from Austria via Germany who embraced his adopted country, Neutra considered the commission among the highest honors he could receive. For him, the most important aspect of the project was not commemorating the battle, but celebrating the idea of union. Like many others, the architect saw Lincoln as a hero, and he always referred to the building as the Lincoln Memorial, rather than the Cyclorama Building or Visitor Center. But the memorializing role was not to Lincoln the man, as was the monument in Washington, D.C. Instead, Neutra conceived the building as a memorial to ideals that were as urgent to uphold in the present as they were nearly a century before. This was to be a "Shrine for one Free World," where the challenges of the Cold War could be addressed before the public just as Lincoln had done during the Civil War. In 1959, Neutra wrote that here people could listen to world leaders talk

This scheme thus testifies to a newer, mid-twentieth-century view of crisis and conflict and to the post-World War II generation's perspective on the value to be inherited from Gettysburg. For those who had experienced battle firsthand (Neutra fought in the trenches during World War I) there was no need or desire for a literal landscape. Indeed, the benign setting that Gettysburg had become may have been seen as more appropriate. The late 1950s was a time to take stock not in battle, but reflect upon how, under the threat of atomic holocaust, peoples might peacefully coexist. Unfortunately, the building's essential role as a gathering place for such reflection never was realized amid the unceasing rise in visitation. These circumstances, however, do not lessen the significance of the concept of this building as an embodiment of idealism in an era fraught with uncertainty -- a concept fully manifested in the physical fabric if not in the events that occurred on the premises.

The multiple meanings of the Cyclorama Building and the sophistication with which they are realized make it the most consequential addition to the park since the memorialization projects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The park road system, quite independent of historic routes or paths of moving troops, was designed much like that of a nineteenth-century urban park, where the public could move through a landscape passively to observe its varied components. Here, of course, strategic sites for the opposing armies as well as the topography itself determined the meandering paths. The great array of commemorative monuments similarly reflect the conventions of iconic representation of the period, although most are dedicated to the regiments and companies that participated, not to the officers who led them. At the center, the Cyclorama Building rises as a monument, not in the traditional mode of a formal tribute, but in a more modern sense as a place for understanding and reflection. In this way it embodies values of its generation and marks them as vital contributors to the park's evolution.

The Cyclorama Building not only stands as one of the most distinguished structures erected in a national park during the second half of the twentieth century, but also as one of the finest public buildings in the oeuvre of Richard Neutra (1892-1971). Neutra emigrated to the United States in 1923 after studying architecture in his native Vienna and working for the great German modernist, Erich Mendelsohn, in Berlin. Two years later he moved to Los Angeles where he worked in loose collaboration with another brilliant Viennese emigre, R. M. Schindler, and then began a practice of his own. By the decade's end he achieved international fame, principally through his arresting design for the Philip Lovell house, also known as the "Health House," in Los Angeles (1927-1929), but also through schemes such as the competition entry (done in association with Schindler) for the League of Nations headquarters (1927). Among the champions of avant-garde modernism, he was considered a leading protagonist in the U.S. -- one of the most sophisticated and technically adept. His election as the United States delegate to the International Congress of Modern Architecture was an early indication of the widespread standing he enjoyed as a central figure in the modern movement. Through the 1930s, 1940s, and into the 1950s, Neutra's stature continued to rise. His work received widespread publicity at home and abroad, earning him numerous national and international honors, awards, and citations. Anthologies of modern architecture published after World War II generally placed him in the pantheon of great architects -- Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Alvar Aalto -- who had defined the movement and had given it direction, purpose, and meaning.

Neutra's reputation remained strong oversees -- from Italy to Japan, India to South Africa, Spain to Brazil -- where he continued to be venerated during the 1960s after his career experienced somewhat of an eclipse at home. More recognition in the United States came following his death in 1971. Six years thereafter, Neutra was awarded the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal, the profession's highest honor at that time. In 1982, he became one of the few architects whose work was the subject of a large retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Although he never taught on a regular basis, he was lionized by several generations of architecture students. While it remains to be fully assessed, his impact on design worldwide has, without question, been enormous.

Large-scale projects in the commercial, institutional, and governmental spheres were of great interest to Neutra from the beginning of his career. Like most other pioneering modernists, however, he received few commissions of this kind during the first several decades of practice. His approach seemed too radical to many people in a position to offer such work and his office was too small to handle large-scale projects. Neutra considered himself an artist rather than a businessman. Through the 1940s, most of his realized work was for residences, and it was thus as a residential architect that much of Neutra's fame emanated. Public buildings -- that is, buildings to which the public has ready access -- began to form a significant part of his practice in the 1950s after the formation of a partnership with the more commercially-minded Robert Alexander and the expansion of the office staff. Much of this work, executed between the mid 1950s and early 1960s, consisted of schools, university buildings, and small office complexes. Irrespective of type, the great majority of these buildings were located in southern California.

Much as the Guggenheim Museum was for Frank Lloyd Wright, the Gettysburg project provided a rare opportunity for Neutra to design a prestigious building on a prominent site in the eastern United States that would attract large numbers of people. These circumstances, in addition to the special nature of its program, caused Neutra to lavish an unusual amount of attention on the scheme. Examining the results in retrospect, the building stands as one of unusual distinction in the architect's oeuvre. Not only was the commission one of the most prestigious of Neutra's half-century-long career, the design ranks among the most adroit and compelling expressions of his personal style to be realized in the public arena.

On the exterior, the design is a superb example of Neutra's flair for arranging masses in dynamic, even theatrical opposition. This he could do lyrically at the domestic scale, but often found difficult to achieve for buildings serving more public functions due to constraints of site, use, and sometimes budget. At Gettysburg, the open, sloping site was a great advantage, as was the duality of purpose. Housing the Philippoteaux painting demanded a massive, drum-like form. From that form grew extensions open to the outside and from which, slightly off-axis, the administrative wing shoots out toward the heart of the battlefield. The long ramp that parallels this wing enhances that dynamism not only in form, but also through the movement of visitors to the observation deck. So, too, does the selection of contrasting materials -- concrete, fieldstone, glass, and aluminum.

Drum, ramp, and louvers (screening the offices) all contribute to the bold, abstract quality of the building. These and other elements, such as the fieldstone-covered walls, are rendered as discrete sculptural objects. They are tied together through implicit, dynamic compositional and form relationships -- like a Constructivist painting -- rather than through traditional methods of articulation and hierarchical arrangement. Achieving an overall sense of unity through this technique was a continual challenge to modernists, particularly when working at a large scale. Neutra not only succeeded, but also gave the design a feeling of monumentality -- so important to this building's purpose -- that generally eluded him and many colleagues of his generation. That the Cyclorama Building achieves a strong physical presence without lapsing into cliche or thinly veiled traditional patterns, makes it an exceptional public building of the period and one of major importance in Neutra's work.

The potent, abstract qualities of the Cyclorama Building are developed in response, rather than opposition, to nature. More than most architects of his generation, Neutra saw nature as the wellspring of design. In contrast to Wright, he never pursued an abstract language based on natural forms. Instead he strove for a conciliation between natural and artificial realms through complementarity. The Cyclorama Building was designed as a counterpoint to the spectacular, rolling landscape all around. The scheme fits its site, enhancing it and transforming it at the same time. This relationship is manifested not just in the manipulation of form, but also through movement and water. The louvers along the upper story's east elevation were designed to move with the sun, protecting the offices and public spaces within, but also creating an exterior that changed with the time of day. A reflecting pool placed on the roof served as a cooling agent in summer, but also helped dematerialize the building from the observation platform, bringing reflections of sky, clouds, and trees to the immediate foreground. A smaller reflecting pool by the main entrance, on the other hand, strengthens the building's presence on the land. Neutra used such elements on a number of projects, but seldom on so large a scale and with such engaging effects. Here sun screens (the ramp provides this function on the west side) and water are fully integrated parts of the building, imparting a kinetic quality to its presence.

Inside, the design is no less an unusually poignant manifestation of Neutra's concern for architecture's potential to affect the human outlook. He viewed the whole progression into and through the building as a means of eliciting a series of responses among visitors. From the rational clarity of the lobby, to the more somber character of the museum, to the increasingly mysterious ascent to the darkened viewing platform (calculated to emphasize the horrors of war), to the seemingly tenuous "escape" route halfway down the ramp over a grated "bridge" to the light-filled upper lobby -- the sequence was planned to leave an indelible impression upon those who went through it. Architecture, then, was not to assume a neutral role as a mere background for exhibits, but an active one that engaged participants fully and had an impact on their perspective. At the same time, the means to accomplish this objective was more through atmosphere than conspicuous presentation of form, motif, or spatial effects. In this way, Neutra regarded the project as his rejoinder to the Guggenheim. While he had known Wright since the mid 1920s and, unlike many colleagues, had remained a good friend, Neutra's views on design were substantially different. For Neutra, the Guggenheim stood as an excessive example of abstract form overriding the functional requirements of the program. His cyclorama, on the other hand, was to achieve its dramatic impact with the building's fabric perceptually in the background. In probably no other building did he pursue this objective with such theatrical and telling results.

Finally, the Cyclorama Building stands among the most outstanding examples of modern architecture commissioned by a federal agency in the post-World War II era. While embraced by some conspicuous segments of the corporate world during the first ten years after the war, avant-garde modernism remained unappreciated in most government circles. The most notable exception was the Department of State's embassy building program of the 1950s, for which many of the nation's most promising young modernists, as well as some members of the older generation, received commissions. Marcel Breuer, Gordon Bunshaft (of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), Walter Gropius, Wallace K. Harrison, John Johansen, Louis Kahn, Victory Lundy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Ralph Rapson, Antonin Raymond, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, Josep Luis Sert, Edward Durrell Stone, John Carl Warnecke, Harry Weese, and William Wurster were among the established or rising figures in the field whose talents were marshalled for one of the most extraordinary programs of government architectural patronage in the twentieth century. Neutra participated in the program, too, and while his embassy in Pakistan ranks as an important example of his work, it never saw its intended use when the capital was moved from Karachi to Lahore near the time of its completion.

Given the prevailing conservatism of most government agencies (the 1950s addition to the State Department's Washington offices is more reflective of what was considered respectable design in official circles), a program such as the embassy work could never have been realized in the United States itself. The United Nation's headquarters in New York (1947-1952), orchestrated by Wallace K. Harrison, received extensive and generally favorable coverage in the professional and popular press alike, but it failed to have a significant impact on government office complexes in the United States. In other segments of the federal arena, the major exception was the master plan of the U.S. Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, Colorado (1954-1962). Skidmore, Owings & Merrill received the commission in large part due to the firm's size, business orientation, and ties with the U.S. military as well as the desire for the newly created branch of the armed forces to give its primary training ground a powerful, distinctive image associated with technology and the future. The Federal Aviation Administration took a similar step in commissioning Eero Saarinen to design Dulles International Airport (1958-1964) as a model facility for commercial jet transportation and as a new transportation hub for the national capital region.

The other primary exception came from the National Park Service, beginning with the entry chosen in the competition for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis (1947-1948). Shortly before Saarinen's magisterial Gateway Arch began to be realized (1959-1966), the Park Service commissioned Anshen & Allen, Mitchell/Giurgola, and Neutra & Alexander for Mission 66 projects and even before then had decided the program generally would be concretized in a modernist vein. Mission 66 differed from the State Department's overseas building program, however, in that it reserved only a few commissions for architects of national or international reputations.

In 1970, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) recognized the outstanding design of Mission 66 structures in the realm of federal architecture, bestowing an "Institute Honor Citation of an Organization" to the National Park Service for "Achievement in Architecture and Planning." The nomination, submitted by the Washington-Metropolitan Chapter of the AIA in 1969, commended the Mission 66 building improvement program for its emphasis on nationwide planning in the parks, including the preservation and restoration of 459 historic structures, and the design and construction of new park facilities. The nomination singled out the visitor centers for their "architecturally innovative" and diverse designs created "not only to provide valuable service to the public but to enhance the [park] surroundings and, on occasion, to memorialize a momentous event."

The Cyclorama stands as one of the very few cases in which a federal agency chose to present modern architecture developed to an extraordinarily high standard as an example of enlightened government views and practices during an era when the United States arguably became the world's architectural leader in the residential, institutional, and commercial spheres. The building exudes the optimism, faith, and courage of a generation that sought to take bold, decisive steps to improve the world it had inherited. Neutra's design was constructed as a showpiece -- the best in modern design, housing state-of-the-art visitor and interpretation facilities calculated to bring a new perspective to one of the nation's premier historic sites. Few works in the public sphere of that period can measure up to it.