Landscape Preservation and Interpretation:
Issues of Use, Historical Experience, and Myth at
Gettysburg National Military Park

Nathan Jefferson Riddle

V. C) Richard Neutra's Cyclorama Building

A Determination of Eligibility written in 1995 by the architect and an historian of the Gettysburg National Military Park concluded that the Cyclorama Building was not eligible for the National Register of Historic Places because of technical and design flaws and because it intruded on the historic and sacred site of Ziegler’s Grove. The State Historic Preservation Officer concurred with the report. In 1998, the Keeper of the National Register found the building to be eligible for the register under Criteria A and C. The Keeper determined that Neutra’s building was significant because it was "associated with events [the Mission 66 program] that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of history" and it represented "the work of a master".

The proposed management plan for Gettysburg has garnered criticism, but initial concern primarily focused on the commercial operations included in the new visitor center. Attempting to disarm opposition, the park service eliminated all commercial ventures, with the exception of a cafeteria and a bookstore, but the demolition of the Cyclorama Building drew criticism from architectural interest groups such as the Society of Architectural Historians who encouraged the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to seek the opinion of the Keeper of the National Register.

The majority of the debate on Neutra’s structure centers on the fact that it is a work by an important architect. Largely ignored is the building’s historical and cultural importance. The park service drafted the management plan with the a priori decision to demolish the structure because it was modern and, therefore, an intrusion, and they wrote the DOE in a contrived fashion in order to portray the building as a failure, whose future contained no plausible options other than demolition. The Society of Architectural Historians did recognize the selective historical approach used by the park service in their various planning documents. In a letter to John Latschar, the park Superintendent, the Society emphasized the building’s prominent place in the history of the park. They argued that the "importance of this setting, then, is not just as a historic landscape documenting a narrow time frame, but also as a cultural landscape that has evolved over a considerable length of time.... At Gettysburg, we believe it is imperative to develop an agenda that is more conservation-oriented and holistic in addressing the significant past. The Cyclorama [Building] should be a key part of that agenda".

Typically, preservationists focus their efforts on architecture, with the result that they relegate the concept of landscape as a cultural whole to a peripheral position. In "Age and Artifact", David Lowenthal argued that historic "landscapes are harder to protect than buildings partly because few view ‘natural’ features as historic". At Gettysburg, Lowenthal’s observation is reversed. The natural elements are the primary landscape components of historical importance. Fences, walls, and farmhouses, in the assessment of the park staff, are natural features no different from ridges and trees because they figured into the topography of the battlefield. They are not important as someone’s house or as a wall marking a particular lot-line but instead as elements of the terrain which influenced movement and action during the battle.

The monuments that cover the battlefield are allowed to be a part of the landscape because they are connected to the events of July 1-3, 1863 through the veterans who erected them, and furthermore, because as the landscape has become symbolic of certain lessons and truths, the monuments have become an intractable aspect of the symbolism. As they were grafted onto the landscape, they achieved symbiosis. Due to a process of naturalization, a viewer can now not contemplate the landscape apart from the monuments since they form an organic, metaphorical whole. According to this conceptualization, the Cyclorama Building is a lethal parasite feeding off of its historical host. Metaphors aside, the Cyclorama Building is as relevant a part of the battlefield as the Copse of Trees or the Pennsylvania State Memorial.

Instead of excising a modern intrusion, removing the building will excise a piece of the collective memory of Gettysburg. The structure tells a unique narrative about the battlefield and about an era of America’s past. Neutra conceived of the work as a sacred memorial, as another monument to peace and unity. It also relates information about the Mission 66 program, which itself provides insight into mid-twentieth-century America. Regarding the Cyclorama building as a modernist intrusion only reinforces the nostalgia, dehistoricism, and sacralization corrupting the interpretation of the landscape. Improved interpretations should be the park’s primary management goal, but exposition should not be a rigorously defended selective interpretation of the Battle of Gettysburg and the subsequent period of commemoration that, in the park service’s analysis, ended in 1938 with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the battle. In actuality, the park’s significance continues into the present, and in order for the battlefield to retain its relevancy, it should be accordingly analyzed and presented to the public as a site with many interrelated layers of history, none of which can be ignored without a subsequent loss of meaning by the others.

The Determination of Eligibility report elides a consideration of the Cyclorama Building’s importance as a work of the Mission 66 program. The report instead emphasizes the building’s design failures and its egregious site location. Designed by the architectural firm of Neutra and Alexander in 1958 and completed in 1961, the Cyclorama Building was a major project of the Mission 66 program. The National Park Service commissioned the structure to be the park’s visitor center, and they wanted it to be ready for the Civil War Centennial in 1963. Richard Neutra was ecstatic over the commission, and he remarked that "The building will last forever. Many honored guests will come here and many distinguished speakers will speak. Their speeches must be brief because the building itself is most important and comes first. This building will be a shrine for many nations and the free world ... It is a building that is built for the future, to endure forever. It will symbolize that thing which we all cherish [peace]. It will long stand on a cherished site. It is a building for eternity because it has deeper characters than any of the finest ancient buildings of the world". As a Mission 66 visitor center, the Cyclorama Building represented a new building type and materialized the visitor-oriented efforts of the National Park Service to improve the sites under its care.

The park service stipulated that Neutra also design the building to house Paul Dominique Philippoteaux’ 1884 cyclorama painting "The High Tide of the Confederacy". Bought by a group of citizens in 1913 and brought to Gettysburg, the painting achieved status as a National Historic Object in 1944. After acquiring the painting in 1942, the National Park Service prepared designs for a new building built specifically for the presentation of the painting. In 1947, the in-house architects designed a Beaux-Arts facility to be located on the same site where the current building sits. Funding delayed the adoption of a design and construction.

In 1956, the park submitted its prospectus according to the guidelines of the Mission 66 program. Based upon historical research and planning analyses of current and future visitor patterns and land use, the prospectus aimed to maintain the park’s memorial character. It also called for the need of a building to jointly house the cyclorama painting and serve as a visitor center. Arguing that the facility needed to be near the most historic area of the battlefield, the park staff believed that a visitor center would be best situated in Ziegler’s Grove near the field of Pickett’s Charge in view of the symbolic Copse of Trees and High Water Mark Memorial. Proximity to the park’s historic core would hopefully improve interpretation and facilitate visitor orientation.

Siting of the Gettysburg Visitor Center demanded a high level of consideration because it was to contain the cyclorama painting. Park staff claimed that the work should be as close as possible to the landscapes that it portrayed since this would serve to improve visitors’ educational experience. Dion Neutra, Richard’s son and the manager of the project, claimed in a 1994 letter to Superintendent Latschar that "I think the original impulses were correct: As one of the MOST heavily visited sites in the nation, placing the painting as close as possible to its vantage-point, and allowing the public to view the scene from essentially the same viewpoint from the roof, is the most impressive and immediate way to interpret this site".

The Mission 66 prospectus took great care in drawing guidelines for the preservation of the park’s historic character that would concomitantly improve visitor experience. Richard Neutra approached his commission carefully. As constructed, the building consists of large drum, situated amongst the extant historic trees of Ziegler’s Grove, and a long, low office wing that runs along Cemetery Ridge, pointing toward the High Water Mark Memorial. Discounting the current criticisms of the park staff, the Cyclorama Building is thoughtfully situated in the landscape. (Fig. 1-3).

In the Determination of Eligibility report, the park service contended that since "the many technical short comings of this building and the display conditions of the painting reflect poorly on the building and its architects", it, "though the work of a master architect, can not be considered to be an exceptionally significant example of Neutra’s work, and therefore is not eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places". The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation concurred with the National Park Service and Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Officer’s determinations. After the Keeper of the National Register found the Cyclorama Building to be in fact eligible, the Council asserted that several factors mitigated the adverse effect of demolition on the Keeper’s determination. In a Section 106 Case Report, the ACHP claimed that because of technical failings, the Cyclorama Building could no longer perform its original functions. The resulting compromise in its integrity nullified its eligibility for the National Register.

The Gettysburg park staff tendentiously approached writing the DOE with the intention of portraying the building’s mechanical and maintenance problems as inherent design flaws. The motive of the park service was to portray the building as a lesser, pitiful example of Neutra’s work, designed when he was in poor health and at the end of his partnership with Robert Alexander. Based upon an anti-modern conceit of the park Superintendent, the analysis is slanted and misleading. Latschar’s intentions and the arguments used to support his proposals pose dangers more general than to just Neutra’s building. The National Park Service acts as a preservation mentor for the nation, and in this regard, if the argument becomes accepted that the technical failings of a structure render that work of negligible significance, then the county would lose many of cherished architectural icons. Both Fallingwater and Lever House suffer major technical failings, which in the case of Lever House, has changed the building’s appearance. Fallingwater’s cantilevers potentially face the danger of collapsing.

Besides illustrating the mediocre nature of the design, the park service uses the problems of the Cyclorama Building to suggest that it can no longer be used for any purpose. Even if it is determined that the painting must be placed in another structure to prevent further deterioration, Neutra’s building can still be used for interpretive purposes. The "GMP Newsletter 4" claimed that the "condition of many of the park’s resources is desperate [and] .... Intrusive buildings, offering out-of-date interpretation, occupy what was the center of the Union line". Inadequate storage facilities, old interpretive exhibits, and the Cyclorama Building’s modernist design are all conflated in a lambaste of the building, which at its core is truly directed only towards the facility’s modernist appearance. Antiquated interpretation is the fault of the park service and not of the building. In their arguments, high-quality interpretation translates into a new, high-quality, revenue-producing building. In refutation to the park service’s analysis, successful and cogent interpretation can be presented in the Cyclorama Building, even if the painting is removed.

To provide support for their decision to demolish the Cyclorama Building, the Gettysburg National Military Park staff discuss in the DOE how the building is deficient according to five themes that define Neutra’s best work. The characteristics are taken from Thomas S. Hines, Neutra’s biographer, and they are, the use of a "long, thin sparely supported pavilion", the "development of a simpler, lighter, more modular and skeletal industrial aesthetic", a "rational and functional design, determined by client, site, and program", an "interpretation of Inner and Outer Space", and the "horizontal orientation and integration of the building and landscape". Even if the Cyclorama Building was found lacking in one or more of the motifs, that atypicality would not render the building insignificant.

The DOE repeatedly points out how the visitor center differs from Neutra’s residential work, like his Tremaine House, and is in fact more similar to the work of Le Corbusier. The Cyclorama Building is not a residential design and should not be judged as such. It represented a unique, new building type with a program specific to its site and client. Engaging in fallacious analysis, the park service, in the Determination of Eligibility, presents their presuppositional goal of demolishing the building as the proper conclusion drawn from the evidence discussed in the report. In assessing the building’s relation to each typical theme of Neutra’s work, the park service succumbs to subjectivity and, as a result, relies on faulty arguments. Each point deserves to be discussed in turn.

Although the report contends that the office wing of the Cyclorama Building is a typical Neutra pavilion, it claims that the west elevation is uncharacteristic of his design because of an external concrete ramp which leads to the rooftop observation deck. The ramp itself is an anomaly in terms of Neutra’s overall body of work but it responds to the program of the building. Originally, the site plan was flipped with the drum at the southerly portion where the pavilion now sits. A viewing promenade lay under the overhanging eave of the drum while an observation tower was incorporated into the structure near the entrance lobby at the northern end of the building. Review by the park service and consultation with the architects resulted in design and plan changes. Reversing the site plan necessitated an observation deck on the office wing. The DOE report criticizes the ramp because it obscures the view from inside the offices on the western side of the pavilion. "Therefore, the office wing, while at first appearing typical of Neutra’s design, does not function in the typical Neutra manner". The ramp’s atypicality does not lessen the significance of the building. It responds to a particular function and should not be judged in comparison to the fact that other works by the architect do not contain external, concrete ramps.

Secondly, the report criticizes the building’s use of concrete because it does not fulfill the criteria of the architect usually working with a "simpler, lighter, more modular and skeletal industrial aesthetic". The report compares the use of concrete in the Tremain House and the Cyclorama Building. Concrete slabs and thin posts in the residential work expressed lightness and opened the structure. The concrete walls of the visitor center’s drum, however, are heavy. Furthermore, construction involved much labor as the drum was poured-in-place, instead of being made with precast, modular components. The report argues that the "material, used in this way, results in a building that is the antithesis of the ‘replicable, prefabricated, mass-produced, low-cost, high-quality’ that Neutra pursued in his earlier work". Again, this building should not be compared to his other work. It was a unique building type where the program of housing a cyclorama painting and acting as a visitor-orientation facility did not call for a mass-produced, replicable building. (Illus. 1-3).

The authors of the report again criticize the ramp for blocking the western view from inside the pavilion and for resembling the concrete work of Le Corbusier rather than its own architect. "Since the ramp is not characteristic of Neutra’s style of decoration or construction," the report concludes that "it almost seems as though it were designed by someone other than Neutra himself". The park service implies that the ramp was a mistake which originated in the animosity and confusion arising from the dissolution of the Neutra and Alexander workshop. Their arguments do not allow for the experimentation of architects; in their assessment, architects must develop and maintain a particular style from which they must never deviate, even as they mature and culture changes.

This section of the analysis of the second theme also addresses the building’s use of stone. Neutra used local fieldstone to integrate the structure into the landscape, and he raised the drum on thin stone fins to lighten its appearance. The DOE only argues that the use of stone was ineffective in relieving the characteristic coldness and tenseness of Neutra’s work since it was "relegated ... to areas that are now seldom seen by the public". Although this stone would have been more visible if the drum had occupied the southern portion of the site plan, it continues to perform the same function. Furthermore, the southern end of the office wing contains prominent stone piers, which the report fails to mention. Throughout the Determination of Eligibility, the park service faults the building because it differs from the other works of the architect; this rhetorical device aims to suggest that the building is a failure. What is at fault, however, is the architectural assessment that refuses to analyze the building on its own terms in relation to its particular functions, site, and historical context.

In regard to the third characteristic of Neutra’s work, "rational and functional design, determined by client, site, and program", the DOE argues that the "cylindrical painting demanded a round drum ... and Neutra’s use of the cylindrical from was apparently a simple response to the painting. The two previous homes for the cyclorama painting were also cylinders.... Several [earlier] designs by the National Park Service proposed very similar solutions to the problem; one even placed the drum over the exhibit space with a spiraling ramp, similar to Neutra’s, for access to the cyclorama gallery". The drum, therefore, appears, in the argument of the report, to be an exemplary example of both a rational and a functional design that responded to the client, site, and program.

In a bizarre logical jump, the report next claims that "Neutra’s use of the cylinder for the cyclorama painting did not possess the philosophical or poetic undertones that other modern architects brought to their designs". The DOE argues that the lack of poeticism and metaphysical discussion in the design of the drum renders the building secular, mediocre, and devoid of architectural significance. This argument is nonsensical. While the park service is supposed to be assessing the degree to which the building achieves a rationality and functionality of design, they censure it precisely because it is rational and not poetic. Although "Neutra’s use of the circular form is here certainly functional, it apparently does not reflect any new direction or change in Neutra’s design philosophy, as the use of these forms did for so many of the modernists of this period. Neutra’s use of the circular form in the Cyclorama building is simply a response to the size and shape of the cyclorama painting".

Following through with this argument would seem to suggest that the building was a typical and, therefore, significant work of the architect. Earlier in the DOE, the park service derided the building precisely because it differed from his body of work. Here, they attack it because it fulfills one of his characteristic themes. In 1998, Dion Neutra argued that there were philosophical motivations toward the design of the drum, at least on the interior. He claimed that continuing Southern hostility towards the memory of the Civil War "would become an ongoing consideration in our approach to the design of the building. It was one of the reasons we decided to ‘kick the cyclorama painting upstairs’ so that visitors would not have it intruded into their consciousness unless they sought it out".

An interesting feature of the Cyclorama Building is the rostrum located at the base of the interior ramp of the drum. (Fig. 1, Illus. 2). It is composed of lightweight steel tubes that are also used to enclose the interior ramp. Beside the podium, the base of the drum contains exhibit space. An auditorium lies between the lower exhibit area and the lower lobby of the office wing. When the rostrum was in use, the back wall of the auditorium could be opened to enlarge the spectators’s gallery space. Furthermore, sliding glass walls opened the podium to the outside lawn on the eastern side of the building, thus integrating the interior and exterior spaces. The DOE argues that the sliding glass doors were typical of many of Neutra’s buildings and that the "function of these movable walls [in the Cyclorama Building] is not architectural, but programmatic". Dion Neutra recently claimed that the "conception of a ‘historic rostrum’ ... was not in the program, but which the park service allowed after learning our concept. It was to symbolically recreate the notion of a ‘speech of a commemoration’ that might occur here annually on the anniversary of Lincoln’s talk". Richard Neutra conceived of the building as a memorial to Lincoln and his famous address, and the rostrum performed an important symbolic function in the design.

Unfortunately, foundation settlement rendered the sliding doors inoperable a year after the building’s completion. The park service describes this unfortunate problem as a design flaw that nullifies Neutra’s attempt to create an interpenetration of indoor and outdoor space. The building’s two-level floor plan also receives criticism for further lessening the connection of interior to exterior space. The lower lobby is partially below ground since the building sits into the grade of Cemetery Ridge. According to the park service, the ramp (again criticized) further creates an enclosed space separated from the landscape.

The original design, before the plan was reversed, consisted of a lobby open on both its eastern and western sides. (Illus. 2). Rather than lessening "the inside outside feeling so characteristic of Neutra or the International Style," as argued by the park service, the two-level lobby efficiently directs visitor flow. People enter the visitor center through the east side as they approach from the parking lot. They are then directed through the exhibit space, up the interior ramp to the cyclorama painting, back down, and then up to the second floor lobby and onto the battlefield. The building thus rationally moves visitors through its interpretive exhibits and out onto the commemorative landscape. Tim Sullivan, in a masters thesis on Mission 66 visitor centers, claimed that "movement through the building is logical, well thought out and flows easily from one area to the next". Even though "the building is modest in size, it handles easily, any number of tourists, even at peak visitation - a fact that even its most outspoken detractors at the park concede".

The Determination of Eligibility report continuously focuses on specific aspects of the building and misconstrues their purposes and importance in order to support preconceived notions of what the report is to accomplish, which is an irrefutable argument for the demolition of the building. Each contention in the report can be countered. An overwhelming flaw is the avoidance of an architectural analysis of the Cyclorama Building for what it is, a visitor center and exhibit space for the cyclorama painting.The report consistently compares the building to Neutra’s other works, to which there are no direct, cogent comparisons. (continue...)

This site composed and administered by Christine Madrid French 2004.