Letter to the Editor: Hendrickson on Old Town Architecture

To the editor:

I agree with Vice Mayor Allison Silberberg’s recent letter about the importance of preserving Old Town’s historic character.

But she is being too strict in her thinking when she states: “We also need to insist that all new buildings…should incorporate Old Town’s look.”

Unfortunately, this rigidity is the norm among a small but influential group of people who weigh in on design issues. It has led to the proliferation of architecturally bland, faux-historic buildings in Old Town and beyond.

It also appears to be prompting the architect of the proposed waterfront hotel on the Cummings-Turner properties to design the most innocuously bland building possible.

Since the city’s founding its 1749, Old Town has been a densely packed urban area. Urban areas are organic in nature; they change over time to meet new human needs. Building styles often reflect those changes.

For two centuries, an organic blending of the styles of different periods was the norm in Old Town. But the creation of the historic district and the advent of a powerful design review board have effectively prevented the building of any structures of architectural distinction and frozen Old Town in time.

Although I believe we need the Board of Architectural Review, I also think that innovative, current-day architecture can coexist with the buildings of the past, and even enhance their importance.

There are many examples of this from all over the United States and the world. Take just one example close to home: the glass and steel Peterson Institute for International Economics building that is set among the grand old buildings of Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C.

In the current, fifth edition of the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C., G. Martin Moeller Jr. describes the building as a “modern jewel,” demonstrating that “sensitive historic contexts can readily accommodate contrasting architecture when it is thoughtfully designed and appropriately scaled.”

The key words here are “thoughtfully designed and appropriately scaled.” In other words, a glass-and-steel building in Old Town could actually work if it was evocative of Old Town’s look, thus meeting Silberberg’s criteria.

To be sure, such buildings are not easy to design. The problem is, they are never given the chance, because of the bias against anything innovative in Old Town.

I’m not optimistic that my words will have any effect on the current thinking. There are too many people who believe that the best architecture for Old Town is what they think George Washington would build if he were alive today. We have already been buried in a blizzard of brick.

But I hope that those concerned will at least relent to some degree on the architecture for the hotel expected for the Robinson Terminal North site.

That property is, after all, set among relatively new, modern office buildings and faux-historic townhouses. There is no real Old Town in an architectural sense there.

It is also one of the most prominent sites on the Potomac River in this area, looking out toward the monuments in Washington. It cries out for a piece of iconic architecture. Think, for example of the spectacular Institute of Contemporary Art on Boston’s waterfront.

But for such exceptional architecture to be built, people who care about it are going to need to band together and speak up. This is the time.

Bill Hendrickson
Alexandria