Olmsted school on ëPan Amí site

Newsletter of the
Preservation Coalition of Erie County (Home Page)

Spring 1999....TABLE of CONTENTS.....Vol. 22 No 3

Olmsted school on ëPan Amí site makes more sense than one that jeopardizes the reuse of Richardson complex

City, school board proposal does nothing for Richardson masterpiece, Olmsted landscape

By Tim Tielman and Frank Kowsky

Inspired by the humanistic modernism of Eliel Saarinen, school at Pan Am site would be connected to existing School 64. Main classroom building is on left, gym/pool on right. Not shown, for clarity, is cafeteria/library, which acts as the connector, and houses on weas side of Linclon Parkway. 90-foot crculation and clock tower termintes vista near northern end of 1901 expo.
Computer rendering by Premier Presentations.

A project of up to 275,000 square feet of new educational and administrative buildings has been proposed to occupy the majority of what has been called a ìdevelopableî space at the Buffalo psychiatric center. The school to go there would house the entire Olmsted program (kindergarten through eighth grade at present, although administrators want to expand it through 12th grade), plus 60,000 square feet of offices (for the simple reason that, since those offices are now at City Hall, the state does not give the city any cash for office space), up to 8,000 square feet for a Teacher Resource Center (now leased in a former school building), and 38,000 square feet of Pupil Personnel Service (now in another school).

The Olmsted program is presently on three sites. Kindergarten through grade two in School 64, grades 3 and 4 in School 67, and 5-8 in School 56.

Pan Am school would be on area used primarily for open storge of rental construction machinery.

These raise a bushel of concerns from a preservation perspective . Foremost is that not a single square foot of H.H. Richardsonís buildings is renovated. Secondly, a restorable Olmsted landscape feature - a 20 acre greensward designed for female patients- is foregone in an area that desperately needs park space. Third, and perhaps jeopardizing the eventual rehabilitation of the Richardson Buildings themselves, the school buildings, grounds, parking, and vehicular circulation would take up so much space that private office additions and parking , which could help pay for the rehabilitating the historic structures, could be squeezed out.

For these reasons , the Preservation Coalition is proposing to erect a more modest complex connected to School 64 on Lincoln Parkway and Amherst Street in North Buffalo. School 64 already houses the K-2 portion of the Olmsted program, which has both a neighborhood component and a city wide gifted-and-talented component. The site , at the head of Lincoln Parkway and north Great Arrow Street, is the northernmost part of the old Pan American Exposition Grounds. It is now occupied by a construction equipment rental company.

The Coalition Proposal would save School 64 itself from abandonment. In addition, it would provide a terminus for Lincoln Parkway by means of a tall stair tower with clock faces on all four sides. In, addition it would provide the neighborhood with facilities it could share with the school: sports fields, a gym/pool structure, and a cafeteria/library structure. These are grouped around the Great Arrow Lincoln Parkway intersection in a pedestrian-scaled and accessible arrangement. A pedestrian bridge connecting the cafeteria/library would also serve to lessen the intimidating scale of Great Arrow in its unbroken run from Elmwood to Delaware Avenues.

Pan Am school would be on area used primarily for open storge of rental construction machinery.

Various componants of complex could be opened selectively to public during non-school times, including the cafeteria/library (l.) which has an outdoor seating area, and the gym/pool building (l. rear). Sports fields extend to rear.
Computer rendering by Premier Presentations.

The Coalition sought a design with links to Buffalo school design of the modern era, and also with the philosophy of Eliel Saarinen, who designed Kleinhans Music hall with his son Eero and espoused a harmonious blending of craftsmanship with industry. It is also meant to culminate stylistic and size progression from the single story Colonial Revival kindergarten structure that lies in the foreground of the bulkier first and second grade building.

Richardson complex

Returning to the Richardson site, it is worth reviewing the value of the complex as a whole. The towers are placed to mark the terminus of a city street and mark space on a city-scale, but on the grounds themselves and the immediate neighborhood, a monument of such obvious directionality would drift purposelessly without the flanking wings of the patientsí wards.

This arrangement, without a strong vertical element, was already established as the organizing principal of American mental hospitals of the mid-19th century. It was Richardsonís idea ñ suggested by landscape architects for the project, Olmsted & Vaux, to place the wards so that, at the rear, they formed a semi-protected inner courtyard (of true American scale) with the entry and exit controlled by the tower. Just as Wright later anchored his houses around a massive central chimney stack, Richardson anchored his institutional buildings to vertical elements. While gripping, these chimneys and towers, shorn of their reason for being, would be misunderstood and forlorn indeed.

Returning to the Richardson site . . . . a monument of such obvious directionality would drift purposelessly without the flanking wings of the patientsí wards.

When on the grounds formerly occupied by the patientsí gardens, the progression of the wings to the towers is a breathtaking, uplifting process. Steeply pitched gables, cross gables, and pyramids pile on the top of one another in a stupefying log drive culminating in the towers. The result was a self-contained village, with farm fields, work shops, tightly packed living units composing streetscapes, and a seat of secular power. The skyline, now a pure 19th century survivor, as well as a work of art, is unexampled elsewhere.

The feelings engendered by Richardsonís plan when viewed from within the half oval described by the wards is still discernable, but has been damaged. The outlying wards on the east were demolished in the late 1960s, and Buffalo State College has run roughshod over Olmstedís Female Patientsí Garden, indiscriminately paving it with asphalt.

It was here in these separate but connected wards ñ five on the east for male patients (of which two are left) and five on the west for female patients ñ that the struggle to win back troubled minds gained architectural expression. The long-unused buildings, each monumentally dignified in its own right, evoke 19th century optimism ñ in this case, faith in the medical professionís ability to right mental disturbances as surely as doctors were healing damages bodies.

When Richardson gained the commission to design the mammoth hospital in the early 1870s, he was given a ground plan that had been worked out by Dr. John Gray, the respected director of the Utica Asylum. Gray subscribed to the teachings of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, who earlier in the 19th century had published a book that was regarded as the bible of psychiatric hospital design. The Kirkbride system dictated a central administrative building and a series of adjoining patientsí wards to either side. The ìclassificationî of patients by type of affliction was one of the first advances psychiatry made toward understanding and curing mental disorders, and each was to house a different class of patient.

Richardson treated the two-and-three-story wards as homelike units, for a nurturing environment was thought itself therapeutic. Richardson perceived each floor with a cozy sitting area, comfortable dining room, and a spacious, naturally-lit corridor. (The ugly metal porches and grates that disfigure the western, or female, wings were added in the 20th century.) The patientsí ìhomesî are as much a part of the architectural beauty of this historic place as the more distantly conspicuous administration building. Thomas Hurd, an early historian of American mental institutions, regarded Richardsonís work as the grandest architectural expression of the Kirkbride system.

Buffalo is fortunate to have this magnificent landmark that commemorates the heroic beginnings of the humane quest for mental health.

Much as one admires the towered administration building, one must keep in mind that it is merely the head of a much larger body that is the patientsí wards. For this reason the wards enjoy, together with the much-abused Olmsted landscape, National Historic Landmark status. This is the highest designation afforded by the National Park Service for historic sites and structures.

The continued existence of these grand pavilions must be assured in any adaptive reuse plans.