A Sad Coincidence, an Engulfed Cathedral, and the Delicate Art of Renovating Historic Buildings

A true three-part story: (1) When I was in architecture school, we were assigned to design a house spanning a gorge. My team of three chose to span the gorge with steel trusses, six bays wide with symmetrical diagonals. (2) A few days after we picked this design, I was browsing in the school library when I saw a book, Architects on Architecture, and thought, “That looks interesting.” I pulled the book from the shelf and opened it at random. There, on page 156, was a drawing of a “Project of a House spanning a gorge near Los Angeles,” designed by Craig Ellwood. The long sides of the house were steel trusses, six bays wide with symmetrical diagonals, looking exactly like our design. [1] (3) Several days after that, one of my fellow students mentioned that the school bookstore had an excellent book on sale, and that I should get it. Its title? Architects on Architecture. Needless to say, after such an unlikely double coincidence, I hurried to the store and bought a copy (for the then-substantial price of $16.98) [2]. 

Coincidences happen to all of us, probably more often than we realize. Few are as complex as in the story above; in most cases they’re trivial. For example, it’s not unusual for me to be reading or writing a word and simultaneously hear the same word spoken by someone nearby. Should that be spooky? Not really. After all, on most days I read or write thousands of words, so it’s inevitable that I should see and hear the same word at the same time now and then. I find such coincidences not spooky, but delightful.

Except sometimes, when the coincidence makes me sad. A few years ago, I began reading a book called The Secret Lives of Buildings by Edward Hollis. For some reason [3], midway through the book, I put it aside, moved on to something else, and forgot all about it. A week ago, I saw the book on a shelf and thought, “That looks interesting,” and opened it. There, to my shock, was a picture of a house spanning a―no, sorry, that didn’t happen, but it would have been spooky. What did happen was I resumed reading it, and the next day reached Chapter 9, on Notre-Dame Cathedral.

The chapter begins with this quote from a 1962 pamphlet by Guy Debord: “The story of the arsonists who during the final days of the Commune [in 1871] went to destroy Notre-Dame, only to find it defended by an armed battalion of Commune artists, is a richly provocative example of direct democracy.” Arsonists. Deliberately trying to destroy the cathedral.

Had I read the entire book when I’d started it, this passage would have been interesting, but nothing more. After all, they didn’t actually burn the building down. Reading it now, however, a few months after a fire destroyed the cathedral’s roof and spire and part of its vault, and left the ruined structure vulnerable to further damage, was emotionally painful.

But the book was published in 2009, so that wasn’t what the chapter was about. Instead, it discussed how the cathedral’s extensive renovation was completed just a few years before the arsonists threatened the building, and how that renovation was triggered by, of all things, a book.

By the 1820s, Notre-Dame would have looked odd to our 21st-century eyes. The walls were plastered over and whitewashed, the floors were replaced by white marble, and where sculptures had been was “baroque marble, green and red and white, and the apse resemble[d] nothing so much as a gilded salon at Versailles or a scene at the opera.” In the heyday of the French Revolution, sculptures were moved to museums and everything made of metal―gold, silver, even brass―was melted down. In 1792, the lead-clad spire was dismantled and the lead was turned into bullets. By 1814, when the French monarchy was restored, the now-spireless cathedral was “as exhausted and tawdry as a painted theater set after the lights have come up.”

In 1829, a 27-year-old writer began writing a book in which the building was a principal character. Victor Hugo set his novel Notre-Dame de Paris in 1482, long before the “modernizations” of the building. The book was (and of course still is) a huge success, and made people aware of what the cathedral once was. In fact, the book was so successful that it led the French Ministry of Justice and Religion to hire two architects, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus, to restore the cathedral to … well, to what was the question.

When Notre-Dame’s construction began in 1163, the design included no vaulted ceilings, no flying buttresses, and no large expanses of stained glass. All the features we associate with Notre-Dame came about as the construction progressed and evolved, over several centuries. Hollis quotes Hugo: “Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Often architecture is transformed while they are still under construction.” So it was with Notre-Dame: The design kept changing as it was being built. There was no “original” cathedral design for Viollet and Lassus to restore the building to. So they invented one. Centuries of “improvements” were removed, and a new spire was added, to leave the gothic masterpiece we are, or at least were, familiar with.

Such decisions about what state a historic building should be restored to are not unique to 19th-century Paris. Two similar recent dilemmas were faced in my hometown of Chicago. The Rookery Building, built in 1888 in downtown Chicago, has an unusual pedigree. The building and its lobby were designed by John Root, who was at the time the city’s best (or maybe second-best, after Louis Sullivan) architect. But in 1907, Frank Lloyd Wright was hired to spruce up the lobby. Wright clad the steel columns with white marble, painted the skylight framing white, and installed new white marble railings and planters on the grand staircase. Over the years, after Wright's work was done, the skylights were covered with tar to prevent leaks, making the once light-filled space dark and dreary. In 1992, the lobby was renovated again, to … well, to what? Two great architects had designed very different lobbies. Should the lobby be restored to the original Root design, or to the later Wright design? The decision was to use the Wright design―mostly. One of the columns was only partly clad with Wright’s marble, leaving a glimpse of Root’s fluted metal column.

Speaking of Wright, a similar challenge faced the architects renovating his home and studio in Oak Park, just west of Chicago. In 1889, the 22-year-old Wright used a $5,000 loan from his boss, Louis Sullivan, to build a modest and somewhat traditional Shingle Style home in Oak Park. By 1895, after four little Wrights had been born, FLW expanded the house to fit his growing family. In 1899, with most of Wright’s clients living in or near Oak Park, he added a studio to the house and relocated his practice from downtown Chicago. (He also had two more little Wrights to accommodate, so he expanded the living space as well.) For the next 10 years, Wright continued to tinker with the house while designing his famous Prairie Style houses (and the Rookery lobby). In 1909, the Wrights moved to Taliesin near Spring Green, Wisconsin, and in 1911 Wright significantly redesigned the house one last time, turning it into a multi-tenant rental building. And for next 64 years, that was the building that several generations of architects knew.

In 1975, the National Trust for Historic Preservation bought the now-aging-and-deteriorating building and set up the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust as its custodian. The FLW Trust began an ambitious project to restore the building to … well, to what? To the 1911 version, the last one designed by Wright, and what most people were familiar with? Or to the 1899 version, when Wright added the studio? Or to the original 1889 version, which would have meant demolishing what most architects believed to be the best parts? In the end, the Trust chose to restore the building to what it was in 1909, the last year that Wright lived in the house, but not without some controversy, since building elements that had been around for more than 60 years had to go. But the result is an exquisite example of tasteful historic renovation. The building is open for tours, so if you haven’t seen it, make a point of visiting it (along with Unity Temple and at least a dozen classic Prairie Style houses within a mile radius of it).  

It may seem that I’ve lost track of my subject, what with talking about coincidences, then bringing up the Notre-Dame fire, and finally giving examples of historic preservation. Well, maybe I have, so let me try to tie it all together.  

Few buildings last more than a hundred years, and those that do usually evolve―as new occupants have needs that the original design can’t accommodate, or as architectural tastes change―so that what was old needs to be made new. Notre-Dame didn’t start as a magnificent Gothic masterpiece of stone and glass, and it wasn’t until the 1864 restoration that the building that people today love, and mourn, existed. Similarly, the Rookery lobby and the Wright Home and Studio didn’t always look as they do now; someone had to choose to make that happen.

The other thing to remember, as the Notre-Dame fire reminds us, is that no building, and no human structure, lasts forever. Everything that humans have built will someday burn down, or collapse in an earthquake, or be torn down by a wrecking ball, or face some other tragic end. Given enough time, even seemingly immortal works, such as the Giza pyramids or Mount Rushmore, will erode away to dust. All we can do is try to see them, in person, while we can.

I’ve been fortunate. I’ve been in Notre Dame, twice, in March 1999 and September 2001 [4]. It seems unlikely I’ll ever see it intact again. And I feel sorry for everyone who hasn’t been in it, and who may never get a chance to experience its splendor. I’ve also visited the restored Rookery lobby [5] and toured the restored Wright Home and Studio. But then I think of the great buildings I haven’t seen, and now, unfortunately, never will.

In May 2014, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art was seriously damaged in a fire. Four years later, another fire destroyed most of what was left. In 2012, I visited Scotland, but only Edinburgh, so I never saw the School of Art, and now I never will. And I wonder, what other great structures do I need to visit, while I still can.

Follow the author on Twitter @bill_schmwil.

Footnotes:

[1] This was my first exposure to Craig Ellwood. As I would later learn, Ellwood was originally Jon Nelson Burke. After serving in the army in World War II, he (with his brother and two friends) started a Los Angeles contracting company and named it “Craig Ellwood” after a nearby liquor store. Burke later changed his name to Craig Ellwood, and, from the 1950s through the 1970s, came close to out-Miesing Mies with his elegant glass-and-steel houses in Los Angeles (as well as the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena). Ellwood had no architectural education and wasn't a licensed architect, but designed beautiful modernist buildings.

[2] I still have the book―You don’t think I remembered all those details, did you? Its author is Paul Heyer, its subtitle is New Direction in America, and it consists of several dozen short chapters on what appears to be every major architect practicing in the U.S. in the mid-1960s. You can get used copies on Amazon.

[3] I don’t know why, because it’s a good book.

[4] I flew out of LAX just a few days after flights resumed following 9/11. For two weeks, as I drove from Reims to Ronchamp to Chartres to Paris, I met almost no other Americans, but all the French people I met were so nice and sympathetic to me, for which I’ll always be grateful.

[5] A friend of mine was involved in the restoration, so I was also able to see the brick vaults that support the lobby and the restored office of John Root, which convinced me that every architect’s office ought to have a real fireplace.