R RAILROAD STATION The railroad station as a building type was born in the early 19th century, when vehicles that traveled on their own “railroads” began to be used for the transportation of not only goods but also humans. The primary reason for such a building was the basic need to shelter both trains and people. However, the railroad station fulfilled a psychological need as well. Before the widespread use of railroads, traveling was an arduous and extended affair consisting of a series of gradual transitions from one place to another. By means of the railroad (and later the airplane), traveling became an easier task consisting of merely embarking and disembarking a vehicle, with no stops in between. For the industrial city, the railroad station became what the city gate had been for the medieval city—that special inbetween transitional location, the first and last view of a city, the physical and psychological location of entrance and exit. The architectural history of the railroad station suggests a dialogue between the building and its train tracks. Buildings were first placed alongside of the tracks, as is still the case in many suburban and rural train stations. Those on both sides of the tracks were sometimes linked with naturally lit steel-and-glass atriums, or train sheds. Those stations that terminated a train line, usually in large urban metropolises, tended to screen both tracks and shed from view by means of either a separate construction, as in Euston Station (1839, Philip Hardwick, demolished 1962) in London, or a third building that linked shed and buildings either side, as in Gare de l’Est (1852, François Duquesney) in Paris. The shed and buildings of St. Pancras Station in London, although touching, were designed and built separately by engineer William H.Barlow (1868) and architect Sir George Gilbert Scott (1876). Toward the end of the 19th century, the size of a railroad station’s train shed became its qualifying criterion, and a contest began to see who could build the largest. Broad Street Station (1893, Joseph and John Wilson, demolished 1953) in Philadelphia reached a limit with its ingenious 300-foot three-hinged wrought-iron shed. Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:22 26 September 2013 By the turn of the 20th century, the areas around such large urban terminals were no longer on the outskirts of town in unwanted industrial areas. Instead, the city had usually grown up around them, and they found themselves on valuable real estate. To take advantage of this, some train tracks, originally at street level or elevated, were buried below ground, and their land was sold for development. A new station building, not just shed and facade, could then be built on top of these sunken tracks. The main Entries A–Z 227 characteristic of this new type of station was its central hall or concourse—large enough to accommodate huge numbers of people and lofty enough to present itself as the center of the city, if not the whole world. Such is the case with Pennsylvania Station (1910, McKim, Mead, and White, demolished 1964) in New York; Union Station (1907, D.H. Burnham and Company) in Washington, D.C.; and Grand Central Station (1913, Warren and Westmore and Reed and Stem) in New York. In Chicago, the acknowledged railroad city of the early 20th century, Daniel H.Burnham and Edward H.Bennett gave lengthy consideration to the location, multimode functions, and style of the modern railroad terminal in their influential Plan of Chicago (1909). For the next decade or so, City Beautiful architects and planners often made a new railroad terminal one of the chief urban forms. By hiding the tracks from view, the concourse-type railroad station eliminated the previously mentioned design problem of separate buildings and train sheds. This elimination of separate building and shed is also characteristic of modernist railroad stations where train tracks and their roof covering, instead of being hidden below ground, became integrated into a complete design. Helsinki Station (1910–20, Eliel Saarinen), which does not rely on any 19th-century Gothic, Doric, or Moorish eclecticism for its decoration, is an early example of this. The main station in Florence, Italy (1934–36, Giovanni Michelucci), was one of the first International Style railroad stations, integrating its building and shed so easily perhaps because steel and glass were part of the whole building’s palette. Because of the increased usage of the automobile and the airplane, there were not many new railroad stations built after World War II, with the exception of those rebuilt because of war damage. Stazione Termini (1951, Montuori and Calini) in Rome, although newly built, was a prototype followed by most rebuilt stations: long, flat, and unarticulated facades, attempting to unify both building and shed into one composition. A general period of railroad station decline occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, as many were abandoned and even de- Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:22 26 September 2013 Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 228 Continental Train Platform, Waterloo Station, London, designed by Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners (1993) © Don Barker/GreatBuildings.com molished, particularly in the United States. During the 1980s, a small railroad station renaissance occurred as existing stations were enlarged and appended to become home to shopping malls, restaurants, office space, and other non-rail-related functions. In this way, railroad stations became more of a place to visit and stay rather than just a place to pass through. Charing Cross Station in London had its 1906 train shed removed and replaced with an office building (1984, Terry Farrell). Similarly, Union Station in Washington, D.C., turned its concourse into a giant shopping mall by pushing back its platforms (1988, Benjamin Thompson Architects). Newly built railroad stations at the end of the 20th century were mostly constructed in response to increased high-speed train lines or the creation of city-center links to out-of- town airports. Atocha Station in Madrid turned its central hall into a palm-treed shopping mall, and another station was built next door to handle a new Madrid-Seville express (1984–92, Rafael Moneo). Waterloo Station in London was appended with a contemporary reinterpretation of a 19th-century train shed to accommodate a high-speed service under the English Channel to continental Europe (1993, Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners). Roissy Station at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris cleverly joined high-speed and regional train lines with not only the airport but also a hotel (1994, Paul Andreu). Finally, the form of the Lyon-Satolas Station for Lyon Airport (1996, Santiago Calatrava) in France uses bird-in-flight imagery similar to the TWA Terminal (1962, Eero Saarinen) in New York. The future of the building-type railroad station in the 21st century obviously depends on the future of rail travel. However, as indicated by the French examples cited previously, a new and faster means of transportation, such as the airplane, does not necessarily mean the decline of new railroad stations and facilities. CHRISTOPHER WILSON See also Calatrava, Santiago (Spain); City Beautiful Movement; Grand Central Station, New York City; Grimshaw, Nicholas (England); Helsinki Railway Station, Finland; Moneo, Rafael (Spain) Further Reading Binney, Marcus, Great Railway Stations of Europe, London: Thames & Hudson, 1984 Binney, Marcus, Architecture of the Rail: The Way Ahead, London: Academy Editions, Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:22 26 September 2013 1995 Davey, Peter, “Places of Transition,” Architectural Review (February 1995), pp. 4–5 Dethier, Jean, All Stations: (Les Temps du Gares)—A Journey through 150 Years of Railway History, London: Thames and Hudson, 1981 Edwards, Brian, The Modern Station: New Approaches to Railway Architecture, London: E & FN Spon, 1997 Grow, Lawrence, Waiting for the 5:05—Terminal, Station and Depot in America, New Entries A–Z 229 York: Universe Books, 1977 Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983 The Lilly Library, From the Donkey to the Jet: Man’s Experience with Travel, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978 Meeks, Carroll, The Railroad Station: An Architectural History, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1956 Pevsner, Nikolaus, A History of Building Types, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970 RAMSES WISSA WASSEF ARTS CENTRE Designed by Ramses Wissa Wassef, completed 1989 Harrania, Egypt The School and Arts Centre at Harrania, which bears his name, is the magnum opus of Ramses Wissa Wassef (1911–74), a prominent Egyptian architect and educator. Convinced of the value of and the need for training and practice in arts and crafts and in the educational and cultural development of young children, he began teaching weaving to a small group of children who attended a primary school that he had designed in Old Cairo in the 1940s. The satisfaction and benefit that those children gained from his devoted teaching and the high quality of the work they produced persuaded Wissa Wassef to establish a school specifically for training children in the arts and crafts. In 1951, he and his wife bought a plot of land at Harrania, a small village near Giza, for that purpose. There was no precise brief. Wissa Wassef was his own client, and the demand for the sort of school he had envisioned was unknown, unproven; initially, it would have to be funded solely from his own resources. It would have to be built economically, and it must not alienate the community of fellahin (peasant farmers and farm laborers) among whom, in the village of Harrania, he had settled. He would use only local materials—the silty brown earth of the narrow fertile plain between the Nile and the desert escarpment to the west—and he would design and build in the vernacular tradition.