The Gothic period in architecture lasted roughly from the mid-12th to the mid-16th centuries in Western Europe. But it's still going strong in late 20th-century Baltimore, judging by the latest plan for a $42 million addition to the University of Maryland's downtown campus.
The university intends to start construction this fall on a five-story building at Baltimore and Paca streets that will serve as the new home for both its School of Law and part of its School of Social Work.
The interior will feature all the modern spaces and high-tech amenities needed to accommodate the graduate schools' contemporary curricula. But the exterior will be a throwback to medieval times, with brick towers, stone trim, arched windows and a crenelated turret. All that's missing are the flying buttresses.
By infusing a modern building with Gothic overtones, the univer-sity is sending contradictory signals. On the one hand, the decision to give a new structure such a backward-looking veneer is more than a little disquieting -- especially on the eve of a new millennium, especially on a campus that wants to be known as a center of the life sciences.
On the other hand, the new law school promises to be one of the better buildings on campus -- stately, tranquil, dignified. It will form an important link between the center of the campus and the west side of downtown. It will help give the law school a stronger identity on campus and off. And if it's got to be Gothic, a client can't do much better than the architects involved, Hartman-Cox of Washington and RCG Inc. of Baltimore.
Whether the university was justified in taking this route may not be entirely clear until construction is complete in late 2001. It's not the most adventurous building on the horizon. Yet in its own way, this convergence of old and new, rational and romantic, is very much what the client wanted. The university -- and the city -- could have done worse.
The 240,000-square-foot law school replacement is part of a $1 billion campaign to expand and upgrade UniversityCenter, the west-side district that contains the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus and the University of Maryland Medical System. It will be one of the first new buildings on the west side of downtown since the city unveiled a $350 million revitalization plan last year.
The new building will replace Lane Hall, the existing law school building on Baltimore Street between Paca and Greene streets. The law school moved this summer to temporary quarters near Greene and Lombard streets so the existing building, a relatively non- descript structure dating from 1965, can be razed to make way for new construction. A 1980 wing containing the Thurgood Marshall Law Library will be retained, renovated, reclad in suitably Gothic garb, and connected to the replacement.
Administrators say a new law school is needed because Lane Hall no longer has the space or facilities to accommodate the latest instructional methods in legal education. In keeping with the university's wishes, the architects designed the interior so it would contain all the computer hook-ups, "distance learning" classrooms, video equipment and other technological marvels that today's students expect. They also put classrooms closer to faculty offices, to promote interaction between students and teachers.
"This is not a law school building that would have been built in the 1950s or 1960s," said professor and former law school dean Donald G. Gifford. "Inside, it's very much a 21st-century building. It will be as modern a law school building as exists anyplace in the country."
But it would be hard to tell how well equipped and innovative it is by looking at the exterior, which recalls civic high schools from the 1930s. With its stone base, brick piers and arched windows, the law school could be a cousin to Baltimore's Gothic "Castle on the Hill" -- the City College high school at 33rd Street and the Alameda.
The local architect, RCG, has worked on numerous college buildings, including the University of Maryland's new nursing school. Hartman-Cox Architects has a national reputation for putting the class in classrooms -- and other spaces that need careful attention. In the 1980s, it designed a handsome office tower for One South Street in Baltimore that would have evoked the skyscrapers of the 1930s, but it was never built. This will be its first project in Baltimore to reach the construction stage.
When they scrutinized plans for the building, members of the state and city design review panels noted the discrepancy between the modern interior and the "Collegiate Gothic" exterior, but came to no consensus.
"I thought [the Gothic era] was long gone, but maybe it's not," said architectural historian and city review panel member Phoebe Stanton. "It's amazing that this thing surfaces at the end of the 20th century."
Jay Brodie, another reviewer, had no problem with the stylistic approach. "It's so faintly Gothic that [it] doesn't bother me," he said. "I think the towers are a good idea."
The Gothic stretch
The use of diverse architectural styles is not a foreign concept to urban campuses. Loyola College in Maryland is completing a Tudoresque building to house its Sellinger School of Business and Management. Johns Hopkins Medicine's comprehensive cancer center in East Baltimore has Victorian lines. Ever since Baltimore discovered "postmodern" design in the 1980s, architects have felt free to reach deep into the grab bag of history.
But Gothic architecture may be more of a stretch for downtown (even though H. L. Mencken once likened Baltimore to "a once-great medieval city").
Gothic buildings, including cathedrals and town halls, are characterized by the use of pointed arches and ribbed vaults, fine woodwork and stonework, and features such as buttresses and ornamental gables.
The word "Gothic" was coined in Italy during the Renaissance as a derogatory term, used to describe something barbaric or nonclassical, including buildings that were clumsily designed, over-ornate or tasteless. Starting with the Age of Romanticism, around 1820, the Gothic style came to be appreciated more and there was a revival in its use.
While Baltimore's UniversityCenter district is not exactly steeped in Gothic imagery, there are several reasons it makes some sense for the law school.
First, the new building will share the block with Westminster Hall, an 1852 church that has been con- verted to a meeting hall, and an adjacent cemetery that contains the crypt where Edgar Allan Poe is buried. Restored in the 1980s, the church is a fine example of English Gothic design. With the new building rising next to the church, the architects saw an opportunity to create even more of a mini-campus by maintaining the cemetery as open space and giving the law school an architectural language that plays off the church design.
A second influence is the common link between Gothic architecture and law schools in general. As the designers surveyed other law schools and law libraries around the country, they noticed that neo-Gothic architecture seems to be the style of choice for many of them. It's the architectural equivalent of a judge donning a black robe and a powdered wig before court.
"There is an affiliation in the public's mind between tradition and elegance and the law," said Gifford. "It you look at the best law schools in the country -- Yale, Michigan, Virginia -- you're going to see buildings that convey that tradition and elegance."
University administrators were intrigued, too, with the idea of combining a modern interior with a historical exterior -- the same approach that proved so popular at nearby Oriole Park.
Finally, there is something to be said for the idea of using a different architectural style to distinguish the law school from others on campus. For administrators who didn't want the law school mistaken for the research lab or hospital down the street, the Collegiate Gothic style was logical.
Given the university's decision to embrace a building with Gothic overtones, perhaps the most surprising aspect of this building is the architects' reserved approach. The building doesn't soar like Chartres Cathedral (the mid-block tower actually could be taller). It's not as imposing as the neo-Gothic Houses of Parliament in London. There is no winking at the modern era, either, the way Philip Johnson did when he designed a glass-clad Gothic tower for PPG Inc. in Pittsburgh.
If anything, this comes across as a sort of Deadpan Gothic, a building executed with the utmost seriousness and exactitude. It may have all the right spaces inside, but the exterior is almost too rigid and regimented. During one review session, a panelist called it "joyless."
At the same time, this building gets the job done. Because of its distinctive style, the law school will stand out on campus and within the city. Because of its amenities and clear spatial organization, it will be an attractive and comfortable place to attend classes and study.
Even in its reserved state, it fits in with the tradition of eclecticism that has long been evident downtown. Isaac Emerson's Bromo Seltzer Tower was a copy of a 13th- century watchtower in Florence. The 1904 Walters Art Gallery was modeled largely after a 17th-century palace in Genoa.
"Baltimore," the writer Gerald Johnson once observed, "is unquestionably the great harker back. Baltimore is becoming a modern city, but gosh how she dreads it."
And so, the law school appears destined to become the next architectural anachronism. Let other cities prepare for the new millennium. Baltimore is getting a building that's ready for the Middle Ages.