Architecture Here and There

Old Executive Office Building, in Washington, since renamed the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. (noahhoffman.com)

Here’s a column from the wayback machine in which I debunk the modernist claim – dishonest, as usual – that building traditionally with classical ornament is too expensive. If true, it’s only because the modernists themselves snuffed out the crafts that once made ornament affordable. The availability and the quality of “fake” ornament is even more robust today than in 1994 when the column below was written, but so is the reluctance among many classicists to use it. As I pointed out in my last column, “Building tradition in a modernist world,” the way to square this circle is to use natural materials as much as possible given its cost, and meanwhile use synthetic materials as well as possible – as high in quality as possible – to enable traditional architecture to be built at every level of affordability. That way, the public will be increasingly exposed to the alternative that good traditional design poses to modernist design – and bad traditional design. Ultimately, that exposure will contribute to a faster revival of traditional architecture, leading to a greater demand for natural materials, leading to a reduction in their cost and the spread of their use. But synthetic materials are a necessary bridge to that eventuality. I think this column from two decades ago makes that point equally well today, even though the nature of its subject, synthetic materials, has changed over time.

The low cost of high ornament
November 24, 1994 

MY FAVORITE BUILDING in Washington, D.C., would be unbuildable today, or so I had supposed. A huge old thing next to the White House, the Executive Office Building is such a mass of pillars, buttresses, pilasters, balusters, pediments and cornices that you can hardly see its walls.

Each item of ornament on the EOB (1875-88) had to be fashioned individually from marble, granite, limestone or whatever – not necessarily with a chisel, but with much time and artistic savoir-faire.

Even if such methods were affordable today, the trades are for the most part extinct. Nevertheless, I have argued that contemporary architects in Rhode Island should design buildings that make more use of traditional styles of ornament. “It’s too expensive,” comes the rejoinder. Well, I say, damn the expense!

Modern architecture rejected ornament early in this century – but not, as some say, because it was too costly. It was not too costly at the time of its rejection. Rather, it was denounced as “bourgeois” by architects who embraced a then-ascendent socialism along with modern design principles. They stopped putting decoration on buildings, and the craftsmen who produced it lost work, and their trades stopped attracting apprentices. The expense of hiring the few who remained in practice skyrocketed.

By the time modernism went out of vogue in the 1970s and ’80s, the high expense of ornament had become a handy excuse for modernists (and cheapskate developers) seeking to resist the growing popularity of traditional architectural styles.

On a recent trip to Washington, however, I noticed that many new buildings in the city’s old retail district had traditional decoration. I wondered how such costs could be borne. I addressed the question on Oct. 27 in “Old new architecture in D.C.”

That column got me a call from Norman Cook, of Architectural Forms, in Saunderstown. He consults with developers and architects who seek less costly decorative methods. He tells them how it can be done and puts them in touch with firms that can do it.

I met him for lunch Monday at the Union Station Brewery, and when I arrived he had already staked out a table, upon which sat a huge binder bursting with catalogues, photographs and articles detailing projects to which his firm had introduced the latest techniques, from Quinnipac College, near Hartford, to Disney World, to Market Square in Washington (a building I had used to illustrate my column “In search of the Providence Vitruvius,” on May 27, 1993).

Under the general heading of “composites,” these techniques use liquid gels, fibers and resins that are sprayed, layer by layer, into molds and left to harden with chemically induced speed into structural elements that closely resemble stone, wood or metal.

The items thus produced are stronger, lighter and more resistant to water and weathering than stone, wood or metal. The elastic molds are themselves swiftly and easily fabricated, and can hold designs more delicate than are possible with such competing technologies as precast concrete or Dryvit.

It takes far less time – minutes, once a mold is produced – to fabricate each composite item. Their average cost declines as more items are cast from each mold. They are relatively easy to transport and to erect on-site. Because composites are so strong, the cost of the walls onto which they are attached is reduced; the walls themselves can be made of composites. Although specific techniques vary in price from job to job, given the type of ornament sought, composites produce an aesthetic effect similar to that of traditional materials at about a fifth of the cost.

Cook handed me a four-inch sample of molding. I held it an inch from my nose. It looked and felt like brownstone, and if it had been attached to a building I would not have known the difference.

This Thanksgiving I will toast these new technologies, and pray that Norman Cook – who by his own testimony is their chief commercial evangelist – becomes a millionaire. The importance of low-cost architectural ornamentation is great nationally, but especially in Providence, partly for historical restoration but also for new buildings along the Woonasquatucket River. The quality of those buildings will help to determine the allure of this city and state to residents, tourists and investors who will decide where to create or relocate industries and jobs.

Chief among the new buildings whose style will influence that future is Providence Place. Now that the proposed shopping mall has received private financing of $130 million and a thumbs up from the Capital Center Commission, its ornament awaits detailed design. Its architects might serve their project well by placing a call to Saunderstown.

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David Brussat is a Journal-Bulletin editorial writer and columnist.

The Old (now Eisenhower) Executive Office Building (OEOB), the French Renaissance pile pictured above, is where my father worked briefly before moving into the New Executive Office Building (NEOB), where he worked for the Bureau of the Budget, now the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). William K. Brussat was a budget analyst responsible for Budget Circular A-95, familiar to many aging local and state planners as a project clearinghouse before it was eliminated during the Reagan administration.