July 2, 2004

	Images © Boris Starosta

Architect Richard Neutra's landmark Cyclorama Center at the Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania is facing demolition in early 2007, much to the alarm of preservationists. The modernist building was part of the $1-billion federally sponsored "Mission 66" program, an effort to improve national park visitor facilities from 1956 to 1966.

A National Park Service study estimated that at least $11 million would be needed to rehabilitate the aging building, which originally cost $959,603 to build in 1962. The Park Service has since entered into a development agreement with a non-profit group to build a new 139,000-square-foot visitor's center and museum complex designed by Cooper Robertson & Partners, New York, at the battlefield site. Once completed in 2007, it will make the Neutra building redundant.

The 35,271-square-foot Cyclorama Center takes its name from the 360-degree panoramic painting that it houses. The 120-year-old, 359-by-27-foot cyclorama, "The Battle of Gettysburg," by French painter Paul Dominique Philippoteaux, was declared a National Historic Object in 1944. But the Park Service now believes that the structure is insufficient to properly display and conserve the painting.

Dion Neutra, AIA, is leading the effort to save his father's famed building. Although listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Cyclorama has been blocked from achieving landmark status, thereby clearing the path for the new development.

If demolished, it will join other recently lost Neutra buildings, including the Fine Arts Building at Cal State Northridge, torn down in 1997, and the Maslon House in Rancho Mirage, razed by its new owner in 2002.

For more information on the Cyclorama, visit the Web Site:  www.neutra.org

Tony Illia

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