News---Will The Neutra Cyclorama Ever Be Razed at GNMP?

Park Service Holds Off On Cyclorama Demolition Pending Court Decision, Scot Andrew Pitzer, Gettysburg Times, Wednesday, November 5, 2008.

A compromise has been reached in the planned razing of the former Cyclorama building at Gettysburg National Military Park.The park has decided that “no demolition of the building will take place,” pending the resolution of a two-year-old lawsuit to save the building. “During this time, the National Park Service will solicit bids for demolition of the Cyclorama building and the former visitor center, and plans to undertake the demolition of the former visitor center,” U.S. Dept. of Justice attorney Samantha Klein wrote in a Nov. 3 letter to U.S. District Court. “However, the National Park Service will inform all potential bidders...that no demolition of the Cyclorama Building take place prior to the district court’s ruling on the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment.”

A Virginia based agency, The Recent Past Preservation Network, and the son of the architect who designed the building — Dion Neutra — filed a suit to save the structure. The park, meanwhile, intends to tear it down and restore that portion of the Gettysburg Battlefield to its 1863 appearance. In a court hearing last week in Washington, D.C., a federal judge ordered the park to notify the court whether it planned to proceed with plans to demolish the building. Park officials had announced that they wanted to solicit bids this month, and begin demolition shortly thereafter. U.S. District Court Judge Alan Kay said that a decision on the lawsuit probably won’t be made until December.

Kay heard motions for a summary judgment, a legal term meaning that a judge rules on a case without it going to a full trial. He plans to file a recommendation with acting Judge Thomas F. Hogan, but doubted that paperwork would be filed until mid-December. The old Cyclorama building is located atop Ziegler’s Grove with the former park visitor center, built atop land that was home to fierce fighting during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Previously, the cylindrical building had housed a famous painting of Pickett’s Charge, but the artwork was moved to a new $103 million visitor center located about one mile away. Both the former visitor center and the old Cyclorama closed in April when the new visitor center opened. The Recent Past Preservation group believes that the building can be relocated to another property in Gettysburg, and that it could be used as a museum or theater. Preliminary conversations have been held between the group and Gettysburg area businessmen Eric Uberman and Bob Monahan Jr., about potential new sites for the building.

“The Park Service never looked at an alternative to demolition in how to remove the building,” said Recent Past Preservation attorney Nicholas Yost. Government officials said that the building is outdated, that it has undergone 30 repairs since the 1960s, and that the goal is to recreate that area of the battlefield to its Civil War appearance. According to historians, 900 soldiers fought there during Pickett’s Charge, in what is dubbed The High Water Mark of the Confederacy. Also, the park has questioned the validity of the lawsuit, filed in December 2006. The six-year statute of limitations began in 1999, the park said, when it adopted its General Management Plan, and expired in 2005.

Text Source: Gettysburg Times, November 5, 2008.

Image Source: Flickr

News---Washington Post Offers Video and Review of Gettysburg NMP's Restored Cyclorama

Video and Exhibit Review: Coming Full Circle---Gettysburg Cyclorama Is Painstakingly Restored To Its Original Pageantry, Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, Saturday, September 20, 2008

For generations, kids have begged to see it, and for generations they have walked away wondering, is that all?

The Gettysburg Cyclorama, a huge dinosaur of a painting left over from the heyday of circuses, magic shows and brass bands playing on the town square, has never been a great painting. Its cartoonish soldiers and clutter of horses never really delivered on the promise of an illusion so real you'd swear you were in the middle of the great Civil War battle.

But the giant painting in the round sat at Gettysburg since 1913, while the March of Progress coughed up movies with sound, television, the Internet and computer games. The painting never got better, but it did get stranger -- a relic of what seemed a more credulous era -- and over time it became part of history itself.

And now, in one of the stranger twists of the history of how we tell history, the giant 1884 canvas has been given the loving treatment of an old master painting. On Friday, after a five-year and $15 million restoration effort, the panoramic Battle of Gettysburg cyclorama will reopen to the public. Decades of neglect, cropping and overpainting have been fixed. The painting has been restored to its original 377-foot-by-42-foot size and installed in a new rotunda.

The panorama is a fully rehabilitated entry in the catalogue of antiquated illusions, an entertainment like Grandma's stereoscope, or the magic lantern shows that used to tour town to town back when telephones had cranks, not buttons. You can almost hear the barker shouting ridiculous superlatives -- "The MOST MARVELOUS PRODUCTION of THIS AGE," as an advertisement for the cyclorama more than a century ago put it (with a profusion of capital letters).

The Gettysburg Foundation, which built and operates the battlefield's new visitors center, says it is the first time Paul Philippoteaux's painting has been seen in its original format in living memory, and it is the only cyclorama in this country that can be experienced as originally intended: from an elevated viewing platform, with a diorama that creates a three-dimensional foreground and a cloth canopy overhead to hide the upper boundary of the painting. They've also added a sound-and-light show that narrates the key moments of the battle. It may take today's visitor some convincing to believe the claim that "grown men wept" upon first seeing the cyclorama. And yet, contemporary accounts (collected in a newly published guide to the painting by Sue Boardman and Kathryn Porch) suggest that the illusion was compelling.

"The panorama of 'The Battle of Gettysburg' is universally conceded by all who have seen it to be the most extraordinary work of art ever seen in this city," reported the Chicago Times when the first version of the painting (four official versions were made) was debuted. "I never before had an idea that the eye could be so deceived by paint and canvas," wrote a Union Army officer after visiting in 1884.

The format was patented by Robert Barker in 1787. Barker, an Irishman living in Edinburgh, was building on experiments in perspective and illusionist painting that had been deployed in late-17th-century baroque churches (making the roof disappear into what seemed like an infinite view into the angel-congested heavens). But the military, which saw a potential new avenue for studying and surveying landscape, was also interested in panorama, which seems to have influenced the form in two ways: a curious obsession with almost photorealist detail and a pervasive interest in depicting battle scenes.

After Barker's first forays in the form, panorama painting exploded in popularity and became, by the second half of the 19th century, a potentially lucrative business. Joint stock companies were formed to distribute new works, which appeared in purpose-built round halls in major cities. The painting size was standardized, and scenes were chosen (religious tableaux and city views were also popular) to ensure the widest possible audience.

The Gettysburg Cyclorama was an entrepreneurial venture organized by Charles Louis Willoughby, a Chicago retail magnate, who hired the French painter Philippoteaux to re-create the battle. Philippoteaux visited Gettysburg and had a set of 10 black-and-white photographs taken at the site of the "High Water Mark" of the Confederacy, where a desperate Southern charge against Union lines failed.

Philippoteaux employed a team of 20 artists with different specialties (landscape, horses, soldiers) to complete the canvas. The Gettysburg panorama was originally painted for Boston but brought to the small Pennsylvania town for the 50th anniversary of the epic clash. And there it moldered for decades. In the early 19th century, serious artists admired the possibilities of panorama painting. In his survey of illusionist media, "Virtual Art," the scholar Oliver Grau cites painters as diverse as the brilliant French propagandist Jacques-Louis David and the English landscape artist John Constable as favorably impressed by early examples. The form seemed to offer a democratic experience, allowing the viewer to move around in the picture, unhindered by borders or frames.

But autocrats almost immediately saw its propaganda value. Napoleon hoped to build an array of eight rotundas at Versailles to celebrate his battle exploits. Even more famous than the Battle of Gettysburg was the "Battle of Sedan," a wildly popular bit of Prussian agitprop that helped channel the jingoistic fervor inspired by the Franco-Prussian War into feelings of broader German nationalism.

Philippoteaux's Battle of Gettysburg -- with its exploding caissons, agonized horses and chaotic disarray of charging soldiers -- is an occasionally dramatic but hardly great painting. In 1883, impressionism was in full flower, and Philippoteaux's compatriots -- Monet, Cézanne, Degas -- were revolutionizing painting. Panorama painters had become purely commercial artists, and panoramas were a decidedly middle-brow form (the artist of the Sedan panorama "put this entire starched, blatant, dreary, petit bourgeois, feudal society onto canvas in a manner that is as thorough, embarrassing, and insipid as the society itself," said one critic).

Cycloramas rapidly died out with the emergence of cinema as a competing and more easily exhibited spectacle. But the attempt to create an "immersive" spectacle remains the goal of contemporary museum designers, who are as hungry for sensory novelty as the audiences of a century ago. In some ways, the Gettysburg Cyclorama was remarkably sophisticated in its presentation of spectacle and history. The moment chosen, Pickett's Charge, ensured maximum sympathy -- and thus maximum profitability -- from its audiences. Northerners could see themselves victorious, while Southerners had the consolation of admiring themselves in heroic defeat at a moment when the course of the war could have gone in a very different direction.

But the "immersiveness" of the cyclorama wasn't just about wowing people with illusion. Its depiction of vital activity on all sides of the viewer captured a very 19th-century sense of history as an almost physical force, like gravity or electricity, that burst into our consciousness with dramatic clarity at certain decisive moments. At the same time -- and despite its supposedly scientific objectivity based on research, photographs and eye-witness testimony -- it isn't a photograph. The painting purposely obscures details (individual soldiers, the precise trajectory of bullets) that are generally lost in the fog of war.

At least one early souvenir program for the panorama shows a Union and Confederate soldier shaking hands, an image of reconciliation that gained momentum in the decades after the panorama was unveiled. By representing a moment when the balance of power might have changed, the painting, and the larger obsession with Gettysburg as a battlefield, seems to equate the North and South, and neutralize their moral and political differences in a shared sense of passionate commitment and individual heroism. It argues that we all share the wound of Civil War -- which is a convenient way of deflecting attention from the more particular and unequally shared wound of slavery.

Looking at the painting today, you begin to wonder if maybe the medium isn't the message. Like cinema, panorama grew out of a scientific and enlightenment tradition and was championed by an industrial and entrepreneurial one. But the message of the Gettysburg Cyclorama (brought to the United States by a Northern businessman) is all about the nation perpetually trapped at the moment of the South's greatest glory. The industry of illusionism (which continues with video games and virtual reality) is placed in service of an almost feudal worldview, the "lost cause," which championed an agrarian economy that was out of step with the march of progress that would invent, popularize and rapidly forget the wonders of panorama.

Other Voices---Gettysburg's Cyclorama Re-Opens in mid-April

Cyclorama, Museum To Magnify Spirit Of Gettysburg Park, Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau, Sunday, January 13, 2008.

A visit to the 6,000-acre Gettysburg National Military Park, where 51,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, captured or missing in three days of fierce fighting in July 1863, has always been a moving experience. But trips to this hallowed ground, considered the turning point of the Civil War, will soon get even better for the nearly 2 million sightseers, tourists and history buffs who stop here each year.

Two major improvements are almost completed after two years of work. In early April, a new $103 million museum and visitors center will open. Then in late September, the famous Cyclorama -- a 360-degree, 42-foot-high painting depicting the bloody but unsuccessful charge led by Confederate Gen. George Pickett -- will be back on public display after an extensive restoration. The centerpiece of the visitor center is a tall, 10-sided structure clad in red insulated metal, somewhat resembling a big barn. Other sections of the visitors center also stick with the rural agricultural look, with a gray stone exterior, common to many old farmhouses in southcentral Pennsylvania.

The "barn" will contain the two most important features for visitors: a new museum, with 11 separate galleries outlining the events that led up to the Battle of Gettysburg and detailing each of the three days of bloody fighting, and a 35-foot-high escalator leading up to a circular platform from which visitors can view the Cyclorama. The new center is two-thirds of a mile from an old house that has served as the welcome center since 1972. The current welcome center can accommodate about 400,000 people per year, while Gettysburg visitation has grown far beyond that.
The new center will open by April 15, with the exact date to be announced soon, said Dru Neil, a spokeswoman for the Gettysburg Foundation, a nonprofit group helping the National Park Service oversee the project's construction. The Gettysburg Foundation is raising $125 million for the project to build and maintain the new museum and visitors center and rehabilitate the painting. The funds include $20 million from the state, $15 million from the federal government and the rest private.

The new museum should be popular with Civil War junkies because it will have 11 historical galleries, each one named after phrases spoken by President Abraham Lincoln in his famous Gettysburg Address of November 1863. Different galleries will have pictures and documents of the years leading up to the Civil War. One will focus on the Civil War from 1861 to 1863. Its title will be Mr. Lincoln's words of "Now we are engaged in a great civil war." Another gallery will focus solely on battle, titled, "Now we are met on a great battlefield of that war." It will have information on the day before the battle started, with additional galleries detailing each of the three days of the battle.

The last gallery, called "Never forget what they did here," will outline ongoing efforts to preserve the battlefield. The architects for the new museum and visitors center were LSC Design of York. They thought the design should reflect the Pennsylvania farmland and agricultural buildings, said Ms. Neil. The new center will also be filled with important historical artifacts, such as a portable wooden desk believed to have been used by Confederate commander Gen. Robert E. Lee during the battle, and a journal used by Adams County physician Dr. John O'Neal to identity the locations of several thousand dead Confederate soldiers.
There are also two theaters where re-created movies of the battle will be shown, an education center for youth groups, a food court, a bookstore and museum shop and an area for unloading the dozens of buses filled with schoolchildren who arrive here.
The date for the Cyclorama unveiling has already been set: Sept. 26. Visitors and tourists once again will be able to view the panoramic painting portraying one of the most famous battles ever fought on American soil, Pickett's Charge. The painting has been out of public display for the past two years, undergoing a $15 million restoration.

The Cyclorama, painted in 1883-84 by French artist Paul Philippoteaux, shows the intense fighting between the North and South on July 3, 1863, as Confederate soldiers under Pickett's command made a last, desperate gasp for victory before being forced to retreat south the next day. The Cyclorama consists of 14 separate panels, which are 42 feet high. The painting would be 377 feet long if stretched out in a straight line. Before being taken down for restoration, the Cyclorama had hung for 40 years in a building near the current visitors center. Its corkscrew-shaped interior staircase led visitors up to a platform where the painting could be viewed.

However, Ms. Neil said, the painting wasn't hung properly, which prevented visitors from seeing it at a proper sight line. The improper hanging also added to the deterioration of the canvas. Also, in the old configuration, there were portions of the sky missing, which made the painting not as tall as it should have been. These portions of sky and clouds will be restored before the painting is on view again in September. The condition of the canvas had greatly suffered over the years, said David Olin, of Olin Conservation Inc., who is overseeing the restoration.

Decades ago, the original 14 panels were chopped into 32 smaller pieces. As a result the painting "was not able to hang properly," Mr. Olin said. In the early part of the 20th century, the painting was "rolled up and cut and stored in various places," causing damage to the paint and the canvas. "We had to mend torn and rotted sections of canvas." There had been three previous restoration efforts, but the current one started in November 2003. Once the painting returns to public view, it will be the first time in more than 100 years that it will be displayed in its original curved, or "hyperbolic," shape, he said.
"We will put visitors back into the time of the battle," said Mr. Olin. "People will get a sense of 'wow.' People need to allow themselves to interact with the painting." The long escalator will bring tourists up to and down from a circular platform, positioned in the middle of the painting. The Gettysburg Cyclorama is one of only about a dozen such massive circular paintings in the world, Mr. Olin added.
Eventually, the current visitor center and the building that used to house the Cyclorama will be razed and the land will be returned to the way it appeared on July 1-3, 1863. Nothing new will be built on the land because "over 900 Union soldiers were killed, wounded or captured during the fighting on the land where the existing visitors center is located. We didn't want to further intrude on the ground where those soldiers had died," said Katie Lawhon, spokeswoman for the Gettysburg National Military Park.

No soldiers died on the land where the new visitors center is located, Ms. Neil said.
Gettysburg Foundation officials are confident that the two new additions will create "a new Gettysburg experience," said Ms. Neil. "Our goal, working with the National Park Service, is to ensure that visitors have an inspiring visit. We hope they go away wanting to learn more about what happened here and how important it was in our country's history."

Bureau Chief Tom Barnes can be reached at tbarnes@post-gazette.com or 717-787-4254.

Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08013/848872-85.stm#

News---Battle Rages Over Neutra’s Cyclorama Center at Gettysburg NMP

Battle Rages Over Neutra’s Cyclorama Center, Ted Smalley Bowen, Architecural Record Online, October 3, 2007.

The Battle of Gettysburg lasted three days. The battle over the fate of Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander’s Cyclorama Center at the Gettysburg National Military Park has dragged on for 10 years—and now, with the park poised to raze the building, it has shifted to the federal courts. Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Center at Gettysburg could be gone by 2009.

Opened as a visitor center in 1961, the Cyclorama Center was built as part of the Park Service’s Mission 66 program, which erected roughly 100 Modernist visitor centers and hundreds of other tourist buildings between 1956 and 1966. It housed a life-size, narrative oil painting of 1884, by French artist Paul Philippoteaux, depicting the pivotal Civil War battle. Cyclorama paintings are hung in 360-degree circular spaces. The Gettysburg painting’s 27 panels have been restored and will be moved to a new facility.

The Gettysburg National Military Park’s 1999 management plan calls for the removal of the Cyclorama Center as part of the “rehabilitation of major battle action areas, where features on the landscape affected the fighting,” says spokeswoman Katie Lawhon. The park’s period of historical significance runs from 1863 to 1938, she adds, and applies to the battlefield, cemetery, and commemorative elements, including monuments and carriage roads.

Critics contend that the park officials’ approach shows an anti-Modern bias. They note that the master plan retains automobile parking on the spot—a key section of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, where Pickett’s Charge was turned back—and thus fails to restore the historic acreage. “Their claims about the authenticity of the battlefield are myopic,” says Dion Neutra, one of Neutra’s sons and his former business partner. “They should come to their senses and realize that Cyclorama Center deserves to stay where it was sited by their predecessors. If all else fails, move it to a site nearby.”

Dion Neutra and the Recent Past Preservation Network (RPPN) are suing officials of the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service, and the Gettysburg park in an effort to halt demolition of the Cyclorama’s old home. They allege that officials failed to heed environmental and preservation laws in deciding to raze the 30,000-square-foot building, that they neglected its upkeep, and that officials failed to consider alternative uses for it.

In the meantime, the park is forging ahead on construction of a new, 139,000-square-foot museum and visitor center two thirds of a mile southeast of the Neutra building. Designed by Cooper Robertson & Partners, it is scheduled to open in April 2008. Lawhon says that within a year of its opening, the park will demolish the Cyclorama Center.

The World Monuments Fund included the Cyclorama Center on its 2006 Watch List. Dion Neutra has lobbied vigorously to save it and other remaining examples of his father’s work. His efforts include a petition requesting that President Bush issue a White House pardon for the Gettysburg center—although the tactic’s symbolism is questionable.

“I wouldn’t compare the building to a turkey,” says RPPN president Christine Madrid French, “but, in the sense of forgiving the building’s appearance after such neglect and moving past the bias against Modernism, it works.” The Washington, D.C., federal district court will hear the case in November, according to French.

“I’m just glad my dad didn’t live to experience this,” Neutra says. “The project meant so much to him as an immigrant.” The elder Neutra practiced in his native Austria before emigrating to the United States in 1923.

URL: http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/071003cyclorama.asp

CWL's view:
Architectural Preservationist says: I wouldn't compare it to a turkey and get over your bias against Modernism.

The architect's son seeks a Presidential pardon for the building.
Doesn't that take the commission of a felony and about a $2 million campaign contribution?

The architect's son views his opponents, the NPS, as being myopic. Of course, he's not myopic about the value of a poured concrete building.

CWL wants a T shirt with the demolition of The Tower on the front and the demolition of The Cyclorama building on the back.