Table of Contentss

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Dinosaur

Wright Brothers

Gettysburg

Pertified Forest

Rocky Mountain

Cecil Doty

Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

Appendix IV

Mission 66 Visitor Centers Introduction

A New Style

Park Service Modern architecture responded to the new context of postwar social, demographic, and economic conditions. The new style was an integral part of a broader effort at the Park Service to reinvent the agency, and the national park system, for the postwar world. The creators of Park Service Modern were certainly not new to the Park Service or to national park design. Director Wirth, for example, had been responsible for the Park Service's state park development program in the 1930s. His chief of the Washington planning and design office, Tom Vint, had been chief landscape architect since 1927, and was one of the principal creators of the Park Service Rustic style. Other Park Service planners and designers who remained active in the 1950s, such as Cecil Doty, had been principal figures during the prewar, Park Service Rustic era. But if in many ways this group continued the tradition of park planning that they had created over the previous decades, in other ways, postwar conditions, new practices in the construction industry, and federal budget policies of the era necessitated new approaches to national park management.

These new approaches were especially evident in the design of the new visitor centers. The showcase facilities were clearly intended to exploit the functional advantages offered by postwar architectural theory and construction techniques. The larger, more complex programming of the visitor center encouraged Park Service architects, especially Cecil Doty, to take advantage of free plans, flat roofs, and other established elements of modern design in order to create spaces in which larger numbers of visitors could circulate easily and locate essential services efficiently. Such planning implied the use of concrete construction and prefabricated components and was further complemented by unorthodox fenestration and other aspects of contemporary modern design. At the same time, Park Service Modern also built on some precedents of earlier rustic design, especially in the use of interior courtyards and plain facades, which Cecil Doty had used, for example, in Pueblo revival structures of the 1930s.

The architectural elevations of Park Service Modern visitor centers—apparently so different from the applied ornament and historical associations of Park Service Rustic—also reflected the new approach to designing what was, after all, a new building type. Stripped of most overtly decorative or associative elements, the architects typically employed textured concrete with panels of stone veneer, painted steel columns, and flat roofs with projecting flat terraces. These were established formal elements of the modern idiom, but they also often allowed the sometimes large and complex buildings to maintain a low, horizontal profile that remained as unobtrusive as possible. Many visitor centers were sited on slopes, so that the public was presented with a single-story elevation, while the rear (service/administrative façade) dropped down to house two levels of offices. Stone and textured concrete could also take on earth tones that reduced visual contrast with landscape settings. The Park Service Modern style developed by the Park Service during the Mission 66 era was a distinctive new approach to park architecture. The style was quickly adopted and expanded upon by Park Service consultants, notably Mitchell/Giurgola and Neutra. The Park Service Modern style soon had a widespread influence on park architecture not only in the United States, but internationally as well.

Park Service Modern architecture also reinterpreted the long-standing commitment to "harmonize" architecture with park landscapes. The Park Service Rustic style had been essentially picturesque architecture that allowed buildings and other structures to be perceived as aesthetically harmonious elements of larger landscape compositions. The pseudo-vernacular imagery and rough-hewn materials of this style conformed with the artistic conventions of landscape genres, and therefore constituted "appropriate" architectural elements in the perceived scene. Rustic buildings harmonized with the site not just by being unobtrusive, but by being consistent with an aesthetic appreciation of the place. Park Service Modern buildings were no longer truly part of the park landscape, in this sense, since they were not sited or designed to be part of picturesque landscape compositions. But in many cases this meant that buildings could be sited in less sensitive areas, near park entrances or along main roads within the park. At times, the new, larger visitor centers could be even less obtrusive than rustic buildings often had been. Park Service Modern architecture, at its best, did "harmonize" with its setting, but in a new way. Stripped of the ornamentation and associations of rustic design, Mission 66 development could be both more understated and more efficient. If the complex programs and extensive floor areas of the new visitor centers had been designed in a rustic idiom, the buildings probably would have taken on the dimensions and appearance of major resort hotels. Park Service Modern offered a new approach that, when successful, provided more programmatic and functional space for less architectural presence.

The new style had its critics from the very beginning, but Park Service Modern, as developed by Park Service designers during the Mission 66 era, became as influential in the history of American national and state park management as the Park Service Rustic style had been. During the postwar era, the Park Service succeeded once again in establishing the stylistic and typological prototypes for new state and national park development all over the country.

CONTINUED

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