Save the Heritage

In Portsmouth, N.H., a sea captain's porticoed house built in 1807 was converted into a gasoline station. In Buffalo, Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building, one of the most influential structures in modern architecture, was razed to make room for a trucking-company parking lot. Louisiana's Greek Revival Belle Grove, one of the most beautiful of ante-bellum plantation mansions, was burned to the ground by vandals as it stood abandoned. Baltimore has less than half a dozen structures left of its rich pre-Revolutionary heritage. In all, more than a quarter of the 7,600 buildings tagged by the National Park Service in 1933 as of historic and artistic importance have been destroyed.

Appalled by this razing of the nation's architectural heritage, ARCHITECTURAL FORUM this month teamed up with the eleven-year-old National Trust for Historic Preservation and Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art to spotlight some outstanding pieces of architecture worth saving. Examples were found in almost every section of the U.S., turned up in out-of-the-way places, took surprising forms (including a jail). Items: P: The East Front of the U.S. Capitol (TIME, June u, 1956 et seq.), the traditional backdrop for presidential inaugurations. Architects and historians (keep it as it is) are lined up against Speaker Sam Rayburn and the Congress' Commission for the Extension of the Capitol (remodel it). Current status: inactive, with Capitol Architect J. George Stewart authorized to begin alterations, but no contracts let. P: Walnut Wood, the n 2-year-old Gothic Revival mansion in Bridgeport, Conn. (TIME, Oct. 21), designed by igth century Architect Alexander Jackson Davis. It became a hot political issue in last year's mayoralty race, apparently won a stay of execution when Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tedesco won on a save-the-mansion ticket, was doomed again by Winner Tedesco when backers failed to raise the $75,000-$100,000 required for its preservation. Status: in doubt, with demolition temporarily staved off by a Superior Court injunction. P: Pittsburgh's Allegheny County Jail, part of the massive Romanesque courthouse complex that famed 19th century Architect Henry Hobson Richardson thought would be judged his finest building. ("If they honor me for the pygmy buildings I have already done, what will they say when Pittsburgh is finished?'') Its heavy, grey-pink granite masonry now soot-blackened, the jail is under attack by builders who would like to replace it with an office building, is as fiercely defended by a "Save the Jail" group, including Architecture Historian Henry Russell Hitchcock, who calls it "a treasure of which Pittsburgh is the custodian." Status: besieged but still standing. P: Chicago's Auditorium Building, the first major work of Chicago Pioneers Adler and Sullivan, which served as the setting for Republican Candidate Benjamin Harrison's nomination for the presidency in 1888, and is ranked by Frank Lloyd Wright as "the greatest room for music and opera in the world--bar none." Closed as a theater since 1940. used for three years as a servicemen's bowling alley, the 4,200-seat house is now part of Roosevelt University, is empty, flaking and slowly deteriorating. Status: good chance of survival, with nearly every top U.S. architect, museum director and historian enrolled in a fund-raising and rehabilitation campaign.

While issuing a rallying call to save such fine old monuments, ARCHITECTURAL FORUM found several heartening examples of recent rescues. In Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright's flat-planed, prairie-style 1909 Robie house was saved when Manhattan Real Estate Promoter William Zeckendorf, alerted by protesting Chicago architects, bought it for $125,000. Zeckendorf will use it as a field office until his nearby slum-clearance project is completed, then will turn it over to the National Trust. In Owatonna, Minn. (pop. 13,200), Louis Sullivan's jewel-case bank, now the Security Bank & Trust Co., was saved when Bank President Clifford Sommer yielded to entreaties from University of Minnesota faculty members. Sullivan's small masterpiece was kept intact while the bank was renovated and expanded around it. Dedicated last week, the new bank attracted architects from all around the U.S., drew nearly 9,000 visitors in the first two days, stood as an inspiring example of a masterpiece given new life.

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