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

The Significance of the Mission 66 Visitor Center

During the Mission 66 era, the Park Service succeeded in reinventing this legacy for the postwar world. The Park Service Modern style—epitomized by the Mission 66 visitor center—once again led the way in establishing what was considered an appropriate approach to planning and designing the built environment in national and state parks. The new, modern image became widespread, and was adopted by many different park and public land management agencies all over the United States. As the national park movement spread worldwide in the postwar era, visitor center planning and the Park Service Modern style were often exported as well. Mission 66 and Park Service Modern became as influential in shaping postwar park planning as the New Deal and Park Service Rustic had been between the wars.

The Mission 66 visitor center remains today as the most complete and significant expression of the Park Service Modern style, and of the planning and design practices developed by the Park Service during the Mission 66 era. National park visitor centers symbolized new attitudes towards resource conservation, visitor responsibility, and Park Service stewardship. Cecil Doty alluded to such associations at a visitor center planning conference, noting that the "parking area, walks, terraces, and everything in and around the building are part of the Visitor Center ensemble, and are on exhibit as something constructed by the National Park Service. They can be more important than the exhibits themselves." In its form and its content, the visitor center was designed to represent the Park Service's modern image.

In many ways, the national park system as it is known today is a product of the Mission 66 program, and the planning and design theory it embodied. Mission 66 established the basic skeleton of the park system as we know it. Although the Park Service Modern style has been replaced by "neo-rustic" and other design styles inspired by prewar park architecture, the visitor center (whether one of the original Mission 66 buildings or a later addition) remains the central public facility for most national parks. Since the 1970s, the Park Service has struggled to become more aware of the environmental impacts of park development and public use; but many basic assumptions about how to plan visitor facilities have remained surprisingly consistent. Proposed or expanded visitor centers, for example, are often at the heart of even the most environmentally sensitive new plans for park management.

The following five visitor centers featured in this study are not only among the most ambitious Mission 66 projects of their type, they are also the work of significant American architectural firms that have made major contributions to the nation's architectural legacy. During the course of research, however, it became clear that this group of buildings was not only the work of famous architects, but also to varying degrees the result of collaboration with Park Service professionals. The Park Service was responsible for determining the programmatic requirements and circulation plans for the new building type, and Park Service architects established the building programs and completed preliminary planning and site development studies. During both the planning and construction stages, the same professionals offered advice and criticism, often significantly altering the contract architects' plans. As the following chapters will show, even Mission 66 visitor centers attributed to world-renowned architects were inextricably tied to the Park Service's idealistic Mission 66 program, and the values it hoped to communicate through architecture.

http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/allaback/vcof.htm