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 (continued)

Addressing the fifth characteristic to which the building should purportedly conform, the park service claims that unlike "most of Neutra’s buildings, the Cyclorama Center is much more like the buildings of Le Corbusier. While the office wing does seem to lie in the landscape, the cyclorama drum stands up on pilottis.... This schizophrenic dialogue between the cyclorama portion and the office wing allows the drum to dwarf its counterpart". This statement alludes to the report’s underlying contention that the building is a modern intrusion on the battlefield. Visual obtrusiveness is however entirely subjective. Depending on whether a viewer is on the eastern or western side of the building, the drum appears to be of different heights. The Cyclorama Building nestles against Cemetery Ridge so that the lower level on the western side is below grade; the drum on this side, therefore, seems closer to the ground. Raising the drum on fins, between which are glass walls, lightens the form as it appears to hover over a void. Visual intrusion is further lessened by the fact that the drum portion is situated amongst the trees of Ziegler’s Grove. The office wing also serves an integrative function by following and highlighting the terrain. The Determination of Eligibility actually spends little effort in discussing the relationship of the building’s form to the landscape. The reader of the report at this point would have already been bombarded by the notion that the Cyclorama Building, simply by its presence, is an inexcusable intrusion on the battlefield.

Assessing the "orientation and integration of the building and landscape", the park service focuses on design elements of the site. They construe the term landscape to mean landscaping as an aesthetic activity. Neutra’s original design concept included an extensive use of reflecting pools, but the National Park Service took over the design of the site and the parking lot and subsequently eliminated the pools located outside of the building’s footprint. The DOE claims that the constructed pools were not successful landscape elements and effectively blames the architects for poor design. The remaining water elements, which were eventually removed in the 1980s, consisted of a ground pool near the eastern lobby entrance and a pool running the length of the observation deck and connected by a waterfall to a pool on the roof of the auditorium. Confusingly, the report compares the rooftop pool to the reflecting pool on the mall in Washington D.C. merely because it was long and horizontal. This inconceivable comparison allows the park service to argue that the pool failed since, as an imitation of the pool on the mall, it meant to reflect the drum like the other reflected the Washington Monument; but it "reflected only a portion of the cyclorama drum at a time, as its long narrow shape was not designed to reflect the horizontal cyclorama drum". In order to give themselves a way out of this ridiculous analogy, the authors of the DOE suggest that if, "on the other hand, the pool was intended to dramatize the view, it was placed behind the visitor and the view of the battlefield. The view to the east was toward the parking lot". Even if this contention is correct, the failure of the pool would be due to the actions of the park service who assumed control of the landscaping efforts. This design flaw could be easily remedied by constructing new pools, rather than demolishing the entire building. Dion Neutra gave a different reason for the placement of the rooftop pool. He claimed that is "formed a point of interest toward which I figured the kids would drag their parents, thus thinning out the crush at the top of the ramp".

Finally, the Determination of Eligibility argues that several technical failures weaken the significance of the Cyclorama Building. According to the park service, the Cyclorama Building is a poor, shoddily constructed and designed example of Richard Neutra’s work. Foundation settlement disabled the various sliding doors from being opened. The effects of settlement continue to cause the underslab HVAC ducts to fill with water when it rains. The HVAC system now pumps moisture into the archival storage spaces. The reflecting pools suffered cracking, and leakage occurred through the roof of the observation deck; in the 1980s, the park service removed the pools. Leaks also occur through the roof of the drum. Aluminum louvers on the eastern side of the office wing were meant to move automatically by way of a timer with the movement of the sun; the timer malfunctioned and now the louvers must be moved manually to keep direct sunlight out of the offices. The most significant technical problem, and one which merits concern, is the condition of the cyclorama painting. It is hung improperly, and as a result, it is deforming. Folding is visible in several areas. Water leaks directly onto the painting and humidity problems create further damage.

Since, according to the park service, relocation to another facility is necessary to preserve the painting, derived of its primary function, Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Building must be demolished. In discussions of the situation of the painting, various park goals are confounded. Preserving the cyclorama painting and restoring the landscape are inextricably conflated and they both result in demolition. There are problems with the way the painting is hung, but nowhere is it clearly presented whether the improper positioning of the work is due to the building itself or later restoration efforts of the park service. Having suffered extensive damage before 1961 when it was placed in the current building, the work underwent restorative efforts in 1961 and again in 1975. The painting might have been improperly hung as a result of interventions in the 1970s. Its deformation stems from the fact that it is parabolic in shape. This necessitates having a bottom circumference that is larger than a top circumference; however, it is hung as a cylinder, and this is causing folding. Dion Neutra argued that in the "programming stage, we were given the dimensions to which to design. The Park Service finally designed and installed the wooden structure to support the paining upon completion of construction. To give the impression that the Neutra firm goofed up the supports and/or undersized the drum for the painting is yet another distortion that tends to discredit the design effort and shift the blame for the subsequent degradation and distortion of shape that the painting has sustained since. It never had a parabolic shape originally; in the last 30 years, it seems to have stretched more towards the bottom rather than the top".

The deterioration of the painting is obvious, and actions need to be taken towards its preservation. If it can no longer be stored in the Cyclorama Building because the size and structure of the drum preclude the necessary conservation measures, the painting should be relocated. This action, however, does not unequivocally demand the demolition of the building. A multitude of historic structures are used for purposes other than that for which they were originally intended. Adaptive reuse is one of the proper goals of historic preservation. The majority of building failures appear to stem from a lack of maintenance on the part of the park service rather than from design flaws. Arguing that technical shortcomings transform a building into a useless and nonimportant piece of architecture is spurious. The step by step descriptions of weaknesses of the Cyclorama Building, as perceived by the park service, is a contrived, biased device. The report undermines the significance of the building so that the reader will accept the proposal for its demolition.

The greatest excoriation of the Cyclorama Building focuses on a purported violation of sacred ground. Located approximately 600 yards south of the Cyclorama Building on Cemetery Ridge are the High Water Mark Memorial and the Copse of Trees. Dedicated in 1892, the monument marks the symbolic turning point of the Civil War and the physical goal of Pickett’s Charge. A climactic episode of hand-to-hand fighting occurred on that spot, and historians subsequently viewed the failure of the charge which broke at the Copse of Trees as the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. For even though the Union army failed to pursue their advantage taken on that day, the Confederacy never again invaded the North. Ziegler’s Grove, where the Cyclorama Building is located, served as a cover for artillery and infantry units on July 3, and although it did not witness hand-to-hand fighting, it was severely buffeted by Confederate artillery and sharpshooters. After the war, the veterans of the battle memorialized the area around the Copse of Trees, but they paid scant attention to Ziegler’s Grove. The Determination of Eligibility attempts to argue that the grove is more significant than the High Water Mark, not to rectify any historical inaccuracy, but to create a specious argument for the demolition of the Cyclorama Building.

The DOE suggests that the events of July 3 "ultimately made Ziegler’s Grove a landmark in America’s history. It was to be on this climactic day of the battle that the grove became a focal point of the conflict, when fire from Seminary Ridge reduced its great oaks to splinters. So decimated was the landmark that, ultimately, most of the veteran trees, the landmark, and the associated significance of the site were lost". A physical feature for whose importance the park service argues and upon which the Cyclorama Building is improperly located does not exist as a historical artifact.

In the 1880s, the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association purchased tracts of land, including the grove, to memorialize Cemetery Ridge and the site of the culmination of Pickett’s Charge. The GBMA constructed Hancock Avenue along the ridge to provide a memorial avenue for the situation of monuments. The High Water Mark Memorial indicates that the Copse of Trees was the objective of the fateful assault. John Bachelder, a historian involved in the creation of the park and memorial landscape, in the 1870s promoted the sanctity of the Copse. In 1882, he convinced the GBMA to purchase them, and in 1887 he urged the association to enclose them in a fence to protect them from relic gatherers. (Fig. 20). At the same time that "the ‘Copse of Trees’ was not only protected from vandalism or inadvertent injury but was enshrined as the most important of natural features.... one of the most prominent of natural features on the 1863 battlefield - Ziegler’s Grove - was physically shrunken". The DOE contends that even though there had been no hand-to-hand fighting amidst the trees of the grove, that site was "of at least equal significance to Union defender and Confederate attacker during the last drama of the battle. There were even those who publicly disagreed with Colonels Harrison and Bachelder, early stating that it was Ziegler’s Grove (and not the celebrated ‘Copse’) that was the objective point of Longstreet’s assault".

A reunion of survivors of the charge further sanctified the Copse in 1887. Veterans of Pickett’s Division and Webb’s Philadelphia Brigade met at the site to symbolically shake hands. Union and Confederate veterans again met at the Copse of Trees during the fiftieth anniversary of the battle in 1913 to clasp each other in an act of reconciliation. In arguing that Ziegler’s Grove was the true objective of the charge, the park service is less interested in correcting a historical myth than in portraying the Cyclorama Building as a failure and a mistake. Even if the memorialization of the Copse of Trees occurred due to a historical misconception, the site is nevertheless the symbolic center of the commemorative landscape. A history of sacralizing the trees has imbued them with importance.

By establishing the significance of Ziegler’s Grove, so that it now supersedes the Copse, the park service is only attempting to provide a rationale for their a priori decision to remove the Cyclorama Building. Logically, their argument actually works backward from the way it is presented in the Determination of Eligibility. The logical sequence of the argument proceeds as follows: 1) Remove the Cyclorama, 2) The Cyclorama is modern, 3) It is intrusive, 4) Ziegler’s Grove is historically significant. In the DOE, description begins with a historical description of the grove and concludes with the building’s failings. Claiming that the grove of trees is historically and culturally important does not symbolically change the memorial landscape of the High Water Mark portion of the battlefield; it only serves to make the intrusion of Neutra’s building more flagrant, something which is confutable.

Park service documents repeatedly refer to the building as a non-historic or modern intrusion on the sacred site of Ziegler’s Grove. The term intrusion connotes an egregious out-of-placeness on the part of the visitor center. This contention is intentionally deceptive. Ziegler’s Grove was not a pristine landscape feature to be intruded upon. The majority of historic trees were destroyed during the battle by Confederate shells, a fact related by the DOE. After the war, even more of them were cut down as they were on private land. In 1876, David Ziegler sold his property to Frederick Pfeiffer who used the grove as a brickyard until 1882 when the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association purchased the land to be a part of the Hancock Avenue memorial corridor. Philippoteaux’ cyclorama painting of 1882, which depicts Pickett’s Charge and Cemetery Ridge, does not show Ziegler’s Grove because it no longer existed in 1882 when the artist visited the site. (Fig. 34, 35).

The DOE claims that "the earliest visitors to the battlefield were likely not to see the kind of Ziegler’s Grove which had been such a battle landmark and which had served a military purpose to screen Union batteries". Judging from the cyclorama which was based on photographs and a visit, tourists in the nineteenth century were not likely to see any Ziegler’s Grove. In 1895, the War Department, as part of their effort to fully mark the battlefield for military training purposes, sought to replant the grove. They did not plant trees according to the grove’s historical boundaries because they followed incorrect lot lines, and in any event, most of the trees died soon after they were planted. The War Department periodically engaged in replantings. Now, the park service is acting duplicitously in suggesting that the Cyclorama Building is the cause of the loss of Ziegler’s Grove. The landscape feature had already been lost, with most of the historic trees having been gone for almost a century.

Not only was the grove no longer in existence when the Cyclorama Building was constructed, but all of Cemetery Ridge had been transformed by the memorialization efforts of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association and the War Department. Monuments cover the landscape around the Copse of Trees as well as the site of Ziegler’s Grove. The Cyclorama Building thus follows a tradition of intrusion. The park service can not argue that the monuments are acceptable since they are part of the historical commemorative landscape, because there are modern monuments near Neutra’s building, one from 1965 and the other from as recent as 1994. Since the park service has no intention of removing these monuments, it is physically and conceptually impossible to restore Ziegler’s Grove to its 1863 appearance. Once the building is removed there will still be a monumental landscape that contains two recent, modern additions. Furthermore, the 1956 monument really has no bearing on the Gettysburg campaign. It depicts Albert Woolson, the last surviving member of the Grand Army of the Republic and Union veteran, who, significantly, did not serve at the Gettysburg campaign. (Fig. 4,5).

The Cyclorama Building continues a tradition of both physical intrusion and use on the site of Ziegler’s Grove. Conceiving of the building as a sacred symbol of peace and a memorial to Abraham Lincoln, Neutra thus related his work philosophically to all the other battlefield monuments. The park service commissioned the structure as a visitor center to serve the functions of interpretation and orientation. Research by the park indicated that in 1895, a "fifth (and the last) steel observation tower was envisioned for location at Ziegler’s Grove, to afford a view from the very center of the battlefield and the park". Standing well above the trees of the grove at over 60 feet, the tower on Cemetery Ridge "soon became an attraction to many park visitors because of its location". To connect the High Water Mark to the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, the War Department built a trail through the grove, thus further depreciating the historical appearance of the site. "Ziegler’s Grove, with its tower and connector trail, became a pivotal interpretive and inspirational point in an individual’s visit to Gettysburg". The federal government in 1896 and again in 1958 conceived of Ziegler’s Grove as a point of orientation to the battlefield. (Fig. 6). Early twentieth-century visitors climbed the 1896 observation tower to view the landscape which consisted of both historical topographical features and commemorative monuments. There is no qualitative difference between the tower and the Cyclorama Building other than superficial ones of form and style. The DOE attempts to portray Neutra’s building as a non-historic intrusion, as a feature on the landscape possessive of no connections to its site, when in reality the work conforms to a history of constructing monuments and interpretive facilities. The park service and Neutra located the Cyclorama Building purposefully after much research and deliberation.

The park service contends that the Cyclorama Building should be demolished because it is not historically or architecturally significant, it is a technical failure, and it is an intrusion on the landscape. These suppositions are all dubious. First, the building is important as a Mission 66 project, a fact ignored by the park service’s Determination of Eligibility report. Secondly, if the only way to preserve the cyclorama painting is to relocate it, the current building can still be used for interpretive purposes. Thirdly, since it too is a monument, albeit one in the International Style, the building is not intrusive, and furthermore, it serves to orient visitors like the tower did which preceded it. Most importantly, the historic landscape was not intact when the building was constructed between 1958 and 1961.

In the discussion of Neutra’s Visitor Center, several questions arise which are most likely unanswerable but are nevertheless worth posing. If the building were in another less-historic location, perhaps where the new, proposed visitor center is to go, but still suffered from the same maintenance and storage problems, would it still be demolished to construct a new home for the painting? If the Cyclorama Building had been built elsewhere, leaving the 1896 tower to remain in Ziegler’s Grove, would the tower be demolished so that the 1863 appearance of the landscape could be restored? The other three towers are not slated for demolition. If the 1947 Beaux-Arts visitor center had been built on the same site, instead of the modern Cyclorama Building, would its demolition now be proposed? The underlying assumption governing the building’s future is that the park service finds it objectionable because it is stylistically modern. For this reason, the park service is guilty of an extremely selective interpretation of the park’s history. The purported reason for the building’s removal, the restoration of Ziegler’s grove, produces another set of problematic issues concerning the preservation of the Gettysburg battlefield and, by extrapolation, of other historic properties owned by the federal government.

This site composed and administered by Christine Madrid French 2004.