Front and Center
Closing historic doors robs us of the wonderful rite of entry.
BY DWIGHT YOUNG
If you ask me, the Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts in Richmond is one of the best institutions
of its kind in the country. I go there whenever I
can, even though I resent having to slip in through
the back door.
In the center of its Palladian facade,
built in the 1930s, the museum has a handsome entrance
that once ushered visitors into an equally handsome
hall. But when the building was greatly expanded some
years ago, a new circulation plan was implemented
and the old formal entrance was padlocked. Today,
instead of walking in from a tree-lined sidewalk along
one of Richmond's grand boulevards, museumgoers enter
from the parking lot out back.
Richmond isn't the only place where
this kind of skullduggery is afoot. Here in Washington,
a new underground visitors center at the U.S. Capitol
will route visitors away from the monumental entrance
at the top of the East Front steps. Better for security?
Sure. Awe-inspiring? Not so much. Across town, the
Corcoran Gallery is planning a billowy, silver-skinned
new wing by architect Frank Gehry; once it's built,
it's sure to become the museum's main entrance, which
means that the old neoclassical portal, flanked by
noble bronze lions, will be rendered redundant. Worse
has already happened at the National Archives, where
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
are displayed. A recent refurbishment has left the
building looking great—but with its original front
door blocked off. Visitors used to enter from the
Mall by ascending a grand flight of steps and passing
through a majestic Corinthian portico; now they scuttle
inside, insectlike, through a door under the stairs.
This is not just another I-liked-it-better-the-way-it-used-to-be
rant. I believe that when historic buildings start
playing switcheroo with their entrances, something
important gets lost.
In decades past, architects viewed the
arrangement and decoration of interior spaces as an
opportunity to shape and manage the viewer's experience
of the building. In each deftly orchestrated composition,
the entrance was the overture, intended to provide
a sense of anticipation, to put you in the proper
frame of mind for what the building was about to reveal,
or even to surprise you. In many of Frank Lloyd Wright's
early houses, for instance, the front door leads into
a low-ceilinged hall that coddles you with coziness—but
then you walk into a lofty, light-filled living room
where the sudden explosion of space is gasp-inducing.
Enter through the back door and you miss out on the
drama that Wright planned so carefully.
There's not much anticipatory drama
at the Archives. Previously, when you climbed all
those steps and walked between those colossal columns
and up to that Goliath-sized doorway, you sensed that
you were about to exchange the workaday world for
something important and noble. Now you just step into
the basement—they call it the ground floor, but I
know a basement when I see one—and while you're trying
to find the Declaration of Independence ("go
down the hall to the left, then left again, and take
the elevator"), you're pretty sure that one wrong
turn will deposit you in the boiler room. Similarly,
the idea of a stage-managed procession from the city
street to the realm of art gets short shrift at the
Virginia Museum. The former entry hall, intended as
an architectural fanfare for the rest of the building,
has become a dead-end space that many visitors never
see. The old entrance was dignified, appealing to
the eye and mind, linking the museum with the neighborhood.
The current one is primarily a canopied, airport-style
pick-up and drop-off zone designed to meet the needs
of cars and their drivers.
This opens a prospect that fills me
with dread. I remember hearing about a funeral parlor
where they prop up the coffin in a big window so that
the bereaved can pay their respects to the Dear Departed
without leaving their cars. Sooner or later, someone
is sure to think of applying the same principle to
museums, and then the buildings won't need public
entrances at all. In the meantime, I'm creating a
Society for Keeping the Front Door Open.
Read more from our current
issue online, look for the March/April
2004 on newsstands, e-mail
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