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Donald Maurice Kreis
They're at it again. Middlebury College - which, by
virtue of its nearly $700 million endowment, is the one institution
in Vermont that has the resources to build for the ages - is once
more poised to devote a healthy hunk of that nestegg on a project
that seems dangerously likely to despoil yet further what was once
the most picturesque campus setting in the country.
Last year it was Bicentennial Hall, the College's
new monolithic science building that brings all the charm and scale
of Attica State Prison to the west side of campus. Now Middlebury
plans to strike at its eastern front.
Once upon a time, that grand triad of Middlebury College's
historic original buildings known as Old Stone Row bore an active
and graceful relationship to the downtown that reaches eastward
toward the campus across pleasant lawns and sidewalks. It was as
civilized and friendly as the Adirondack panorama on the west campus
was lush and pastoral. Then, in the 1960s, the College commissioned
The Architects' Collaborative to design a wall of brutalist buildings
- only one of which was actually built, as the Science Center -
to sever the link between town and campus.
The silver lining in seeing the labs and scientists
decamp for the grandiose Bicentennial Hall was the idea that the
Science Center might come tumbling down. And so it shall - this
August, in fact.
Meanwhile, tuition at Middlebury rises to $34,300
next year. To command that whopping fee, the College must make itself
ever more fancy, high-tech and resort-like. It must compete with
the likes of Dartmouth and its new $55 million Berry Library, designed
by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown to bring that campus's
printed and electronic resources into one dazzling facility. So,
naturally, Middlebury's clunky old Starr Library, with its 18 different
levels and mold-ridden shelves, must be stripped of its historic
role.
When the prestigious firm of Gwathmey Siegel and Associates got
the commission to design Middlebury's answer to Berry, Charles Gwathmey
and Robert Siegel thought their charge would involve reinventing
Starr. Their vision was to retain the building's stately, early
20th Century beaux arts core, scrap the 80 percent of the building
that consists of subsequent random accretions, and surround the
historic gem with a new structure that would be worthy of Gwathmey
Siegel's record of distinguished modernist campus architecture.
What virtue in such a plan! Starr is situated to the
south of Old Stone Row, in a location that links these important
academic buildings, the school's arts and athletic complexes across
South Main Street and the McCullough student center just to the
west. Centralizing the College's information technology resources
in such a location would be, quite sensibly, fully in keeping with
the College's master plan.
One is therefore left to guess, in a state of agitated
consternation, as to why the College has turned its back on both
its master plan and the original Gwathmey Siegel design in favor
of throwing three acres' worth of new library space between Old
Stone Row and downtown Middlebury ñ moving Starr Library
to virtually the same site being vacated by the much-reviled Science
Center. In Berlin they replaced The Wall with masterworks by Piano,
Moneo, Rodgers and Isozaki. In Middlebury they erected. . . another
wall, or at least a barrier that will only accentuate the distance
between the academic elites and the regular folks of Addison County's
shire town.
Messrs. Gwathmey and Siegel, with their talented staff,
have struggled heroically to do justice to this fundamentally flawed
commission. They have found a way to jam the three acres of space
into a building that will be a story and a half lower than its predecessor
on the site, restoring something of the view of the Green Mountains
to the east. The curved western facade of the proposed library seeks
to open the vista toward Old Stone Row, in a welcoming gesture toward
downtown. At eye level, the building is designed not to read as
a monolith; its facades are broken down into discrete modules that
resonate with the scale and details of the adjacent Monroe Hall
and private residences. Inside are technologically flexible spaces
- recognizing that nobody really knows if books will go obsolete
altogether - and a perimeter of carrels and reading spaces reminiscent
of such great libraries as Kahn's in Exeter and Safdie's in Vancouver.
It could be a good place to learn and to think.
Still, there is no ignoring that Middlebury College's
new library perpetuates rather than ameliorates an unwelcome incursion
into the surrounding neighborhood. Historic homes will have to be
moved. Special shades will need to be installed to mitigate light
pollution generated by late-nite library users. Most significantly,
there is the symbolic effect of a huge structure that will once
more cut off this campus from its neighbors.
Addressing this year's graduating class at Middlebury,
Fred Rodgers of Mr. Rodgers' Neighborhood fame spoke of Vermont
as "a small state which makes an enormous difference."
Middlebury College - proud enough of these sentiments to place them
prominently on its web site - is nevertheless governed by trustees
who by and large neither live in Vermont nor are of Vermont. These
titans of power and finance from sprawling metropolises are the
ones who decide how Middlebury College will treat its legacy as
a small but great institution in a small but great state.
Who will appeal to the better selves of these stewards,
reminding them that their power to build well in Vermont has no
rival? Act 250 assures that theirs is not the last word, but it
is unrealistic to expect the district or state environmental boards
to correct flaws that go more to the soul of the College than the
criteria in the statute. Middlebury counts among its alumni, its
faculty and even its trustees many who can speak to this issue with
forcefulness, insight and wisdom. In the face of Bicentennial Hall
and, now, Starr Library, silence is no longer an option.
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