The Landmark Man

Given the chance to tear down some musty old theater and to design a glass-walled new "culture center," most architects would rejoice and turn to their drawing boards. Not Chicago's Harry Weese. Though he is one of the nation's most talented architects, he goes out of his way to preserve landmark buildings. "We do it because it has to be done," he explains. "Fine old buildings give our cities character and continuity. They give us a sense of stability."

Weese, 58, is a natural landmark man. He loves cities, he bicycles to work, not so much to get the exercise as to feel Chicago's texture. Characteristically, he installed his office in an old warehouse with a greenery-filled atrium and a glass-roofed elevator--"so you can look at the clouds." His own designs, from Washington's Arena Stage theater to the U.S. embassy in Ghana, are similarly lyric, and they always respect their architectural context. In his Walton Apartments in Chicago, for example, he used bay windows to echo those used by the city's great turn-of-the-century architects: Daniel Burnham, John Root, Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler. Says Weese: "I would rather match a cornice line, or set one that could be matched, than try to build a spectacular building that stands by itself."

This concern for urban fabric led Weese to his first renovation job--Chicago's Auditorium Theater. Designed by Adler and Sullivan in the 1880s, it had become a U.S.O. club with bowling alleys and finally ended as a neglected shell. Its roof leaked; its 4,000 velvet-covered seats were rotting. Weese meticulously restored the stately interior with its soaring arches, curving balconies and richly ornamental plaster friezes. The work cost $2,000,000 and was finished in 1967. The result: a glowing, golden concert and opera hall with near perfect acoustics.

Some of Weese's restoration jobs--notably Chicago's huge, Greco-Roman Field Museum of Natural History, its Newberry Library and Orchestra Hall--involve what he calls "good housekeeping." He makes no major structural changes, but he reorganizes layouts and adds air conditioning and modern lighting. The point: to keep old buildings useful, and so to give them new life.

Daring Required. Sometimes that is a difficult task. Weese went to Louisville to save a small bank that he describes as "one of the nation's most sophisticated examples of Greek Revival style." By building a new auditorium and stage between the bank and an old warehouse on a rear lot, he turned the complex into a theater. Residents of Montgomery, Ala., called Weese to save the classical pre-Civil War state capitol from legislators who want a new building. He has proposed new lighting and air conditioning and a refurbishing of the gracious old details, down to the yellow-pine floors and marble fireplaces.

"It requires some daring to keep a building's integrity and still plan for maximum feasible use," Weese says. "You have to concentrate on what not to do. If you touch one thing, like the plumbing, you can sometimes start a chain reaction." As much as possible, he follows the original plans. That takes selflessness, the willingness to let a long-dead architect dictate nearly every step. But, Weese wryly notes, "Modern architects have a hard time matching the quality of work of the old masters."

Weese is convinced that renovation almost always costs less than leveling old buildings and constructing anew. Boston's old Jewett Theater, an intimate Georgian structure, would have cost at least $5,000,000 to replace. Boston University is spending $400,000 to fix it up. Even less striking buildings are worth refurbishing. Weese is currently starting a project, funded by the Federal Housing Administration, to rehabilitate an elegant, old three-story walk-up apartment house in a Chicago slum. "You can't duplicate it today," he says. "Saving this kind of building saves a bit of the urban environment."

There is a definite place for new buildings in his philosophy too. "Coexistence is the key," Weese says. "The old with the new." Then he adds a more personal reason for his efforts at preservation: "It might sound a bit chauvinistic--but maybe someone will save one of our buildings some day."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.