Doctors bury their mistakes.
Architects grow ivy on theirs.
That sarcastic assessment, attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright, is one of the first jokes students hear in architecture school, and it may represent one of the reasons that the American landscape looks as ugly as it does.
All of which makes it a pleasant surprise to see so much thought and creativity going into correcting one of the biggest architectural blunders in Inner Harbor history: the peanut butter-colored information center on Pier One.
Thrown up in 1990 at a cost of $875,000, the two-story building was an aesthetic and economic disaster from the start. Intended to promote the U.S.S. Constellation, it ended up blocking views of it instead.
Now that the Constellation has returned to the Inner Harbor after a $9 million restoration, its new stewards, the directors of the Living Classrooms Foundation, want to replace the old center with a structure that will be less of an obtrusion on the 1854 sloop of war and less of a blight on the Inner Harbor.
Beyond that, they want to turn Pier One into a gateway for the National Historic Seaport, a newly formed network of 16 waterfront attractions in Baltimore that have joined together for marketing, promotion and ticket sales.
The foundation's directors believe that Pier One is the ideal spot for a new sort of interactive museum that can help tell the story of Baltimore's Inner Harbor and guide visitors to the growing array of maritime attractions along the water's edge.
It's an ambitious agenda and makes a tricky assignment for any architect. Instead of shrinking the building, the planners want to increase its size slightly. But if it's done right -- and preliminary plans appear to be headed in a positive direction -- this wharfside project could be nearly as significant for the Inner Harbor as the restoration of the Constellation itself.
The heart of the proposed maritime center is a two-story building on Pier One that would contain 5,000 to 6,000 square feet of space, including a ticket office, souvenir shop, orientation center, cafe, staff offices, artifact display area, and passageway to the deck of the Constellation.
On paper, that's not unlike the current 4,600-square-foot building. However, there are three key differences that promise to make the new building better: a new sponsoring organization, a broader set of objectives for the building's use, and a more sensitive design approach.
Its new sponsor, the Living Classrooms Foundation, is a nonprofit organization that effectively merged with the Constellation Foundation in May and is now responsible for maintaining and conducting tours of the Constellation.
Extending stewardship
Now operating from a campus on Center Dock at 802 S. Caroline St., the foundation was established in 1985 to provide hands-on education and employment training for young people. In recent years, it has expanded to take over operation of the harbor's paddle boat concession and many of the vessels on display around the Inner Harbor, including the lightship Chesapeake and the World War II submarine Torsk.
It launched the National Historic Seaport as a way to promote attractions that have much in common but never had any joint ticketing system or marketing campaign. Participants range from the Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse on Pier 5 to such established attractions as Fort McHenry and the Baltimore Museum of Industry. With the Constellation added to the mix, the 16 attractions are expected to draw more than 1.5 million visitors a year.
The foundation has been looking for one central location where visitors could learn all about the waterfront -- a sort of ground zero for the Inner Harbor experience. As they made plans to take control of the Constellation, the foundation's directors realized that the best location would be Pier One, just south of Harborplace's Pratt Street pavilion and less than a block from the Inner Harbor amphitheater.
From this location, directors realized, they had an opportunity not only to promote the Constellation but also to convey the larger message about Baltimore's maritime heritage and the redevelopment of the harbor. Pier One is almost exactly at the halfway point of a seven-mile promenade that stretches from Canton to South Baltimore, a promenade that the Living Classrooms Foundation is in charge of completing.
But how could the foundation fit this content-enriched program onto Pier One, without overloading it as before?
To plan its new facility, the organization turned to two lead designers: Mario L. Schack, the German-born, Harvard-trained architect of the existing Constellation building, and the local firm of Cho, Wilks & Benn, a company that has worked on many successful waterfront projects. Also participating in the design discussions is Lawrence Whitman, associate director of design with the Rouse Co., the builder of Harborplace.
In their preliminary planning, the designers have made several decisions that promise to make the new building less of an obstruction than its predecessor.
* First, they approached the project as a master planning exercise for all of Pier One, not just the design of a building.
* Second, they proposed to move the building to the east side of the pier and connect it to the ship by a long ramp. This allows the Living Classrooms Foundation to keep the existing building in operation while work is going on. More importantly, it allows the design team to create a structure that will contain all the spaces needed to serve Constellation visitors without obstructing views of the vessel itself.
* Third, the designers have set out to create a building that is as light and transparent as possible. Preliminary drawings indicate that the replacement building will be longer and narrower than the existing one, with walls of glass rather than opaque materials. Part of the space may be open to the air. The ramp, too, will be as light as possible.
The improvements proposed for the rest of the pier are promising as well. By shifting the building to the east side, the architects have created a corridor framed by the Constellation on the west side and leading to an open area at the south end of the pier.
More uses of space
The designers believe there is potential for this space to be filled with free exhibits about the Constellation and the port in general, including demonstrations on subjects such as shipbuilding and navigation, and displays about other harbor attractions.
The Living Classrooms Foundation already employs "living history" educators aboard the Constellation and directors see an opportunity to have even more roving ambassadors on the pier. They also want to put more benches around the perimeter of the pier to show off the panoramic views.
It wasn't just a matter of dropping a building on a pier, said architect Schack. "The thinking is, we've spent $9 million to repair the Constellation. Now how can we improve the setting for the Constellation? The goal was to generate ideas for using the pier better."
If there is any reason for concern about this ambitious approach, it's that there is a limited amount of space to accomplish everything that the Living Classrooms Foundation wants to do. Moving the building to the east side of the pier gives the designers more room for creativity, but it shouldn't be a license to let the building get too big or cumbersome.
Fortunately, the gateway to the National Historic Seaport doesn't have to be a full-blown visitors center. The Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association plans to build a structure on the west shore of the Inner Harbor that will serve as the official visitors center for the city, providing information about hotels, restaurants and other attractions.
Because that project is in the works, designers of the Pier One building can focus on telling the harbor story. As the two projects move forward, designers of both should coordinate their exhibits and offerings so they aren't redundant and each building can be pared down as much as possible.
At this point, the Constellation project is probably at least a year away from opening. The Living Classrooms Foundation needs to finish its design work, amend its lease for the city-owned pier and raise construction funds. Planners have no firm cost estimates. But if the previous building cost $875,000 nine years ago, this one is likely to be even more -- not counting the cost of demolishing the current building.
In many ways, this is a project that could not have been built 10 years ago -- or even last year -- because it is so much a response to changing attitudes about the use of public space in general and the Inner Harbor in particular.
The strategy of transforming the pier into a gateway for a network of waterfront attractions wouldn't have worked without the National Historic Seaport in place. It's an idea that is long overdue, and Pier One is the logical place to do it.
Because the Living Classrooms Foundation and its architects are following such a careful planning process -- eager to incorporate new ideas for activating the waterfront, yet determined to learn from the mistakes of the past -- this is one building that shouldn't need any ivy.
Pub Date: 07/18/99