Present: Jack Alvarez, Jennifer Bentley, Matthew Bronski, Cynthia Chabot, Taya Dixon, Leslie Donovan, Marilyn Fenellosa, Nate Ginsberg, Jack Glassman, Sarah Gray, Jean Marie Hall, Susan Hollister, Marie Holmes, Wendall Kalsow, Kimberly Konrad, Ellen Lipsey, Doug Manley, Henry Moss, Ivan Myjer, Susan Schur, Malcolm Smiley, Robert Thomas, Eric Ward, Sara Wermiel 1. Fenway Park: Shifting alliances among bidders for the Red Sox and speculation about different investors' intentions with regard to renovation and demolition/new construction had grasped everyone's' attention, but John Harrington kept his baseball cards close to his chest. Kim Konrad urged people to use Save Fenway Park's internet-based clipping service to stay on top of the news. Interestingly, she noted that the free Metro was doing a creditable job of reporting the sale, but that it was necessary to read the Herald and Globe as well for complete coverage. The new owners have professed an interest in keeping the existing ballpark and adding height to the stands. With the grand expansion plan set aside, even the Globe has run an editorial stating that they had been persuaded that modernization would be logistically and financially infeasible,and would support the new owner's taking a new look at adding seats and amenities at the existing site. It seems certain that the site will remain at Fenway. If that is the case, then think about the logistics of demolition and new construction! Congratulations to Save Fenway Park! Common sense won the first round. 2. The Early Guys, 19th Century Architect/Engineer/Builder Heroes: Sara Wermiel tackled the great topic of the emergence of American architects from the creative, primordial soup of the building trades, an open and optimistic approach to new structural materials, and the emergence of general contracting, in the first half of the 19th century. Many architects were also responsible for civil engineering projects and often were employed by the military. Her heroes predate the influence of the Beaux Arts and the specialized architect/visionary renderer, starting with Benjamin Latrobe and descendents from his studio, to New England, via pumps and viaducts to canal surveys, lighthouses and beacons in cast iron, fire proof construction chimeras and successes, patent bridge trusses, quarrying, machine design and manufacture, harbor work including dry docks, and a number of beautiful buildings along the way. Gentlemen architects in Great Britain were largely hostile to Paxton's miraculous Crystal Palace, but the response in the United States was dissimilar. In America innovative structural engineers emerged within architecture before the 1850's. After the Civil War, more civil engineers were available for engineeing work, and some (Croydon Purdy) began to focus their businesses on structural engineering for buildings. College-based education for architects became more art-oriented and shed the engineering content of the earlier period. Sara's multi-media presentation (overhead transparencies, slides, summary fact sheet handouts, voiceovers, and emphatic gestures) brought to life a number of men whose careers are difficult for amateurs to trace in print except through scattered references. Sara's recent book, The Fireproof Building, Technology and Public Safety in the Nineteenth Century American City (Johns Hopkins 2000, buy it immediately!) explains how the earliest of these designers spread their influence through several generations of practitioners. Her presentation to our committee concentrated on the trades background of these designers and the increase in the professionalization of engineers, the more systematic management of capital and capital projects, then the specialization into different parts of the building industry in the decades around the Civil War. [David Fixler in a course he once taught at the BAC, traced similar changes in France when Durand helped to found the Ecole Polytechnique and when later, the Ecole des Beaux Arts grew up around an armature of less technical skills.] Sara's survey placed the Early Guys in three generational groups but chronological overlaps abound: Generation One: Benjamin Latrobe, John McComb, Jr. Generation Two: Robert Mills, Alexander Parris, William Strickland, Ithiel Town, Solomon Willard Generation Three: Isaiah Rogers, Thomas U. Walter, Ammi B. Young
8: 00 a.m., Thursday, January 10, 2002 Focus Topic: Conservators' Hot Topics, Ivan Myjer & Jean Marie Hall The Architects' Building 52 Broad Street, Fifth Floor, Boston |