Houston Museum District: Map Showing Principal Public Fpacc-S
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
3 4 Spring 1 9 9 6 C i t e 3 4 S p i i n g 19 9 6 Thr Houston Museum District: map showing principal public fpacc-s. ClUKOt , a Htrmonn Drin « PE-TKR C. PAI'AIM.MITRIOLI HOUSTON In the1 past five years, the area n o r t h of Hermann Park f r o m Jackson Street to Montrose Boulevard has been rite site ul a succession ol institutional initiatives MUSEUM that account for its designation as a "district."' The coincidence of indepen- dent decisions has resulted in the relative proximity of a dozen or so similar institu- tions. In a city devoid of Zoning this does not precisely constitute de facto z o n i n g , but it certainly has resulted in a clearly identifiable /.one. T h e I.awndale A r t and Performance Center at 4l J12 South M a i n Street and the campus of ihe M e n i l Collection, west of M o n t r o s e four blocks, bordered by West A l a b a m a on the north and R i c h m o n d Avenue on the s o u t h , are sufficiently close to be associated w ith tins district. The perception of litis area as the M u s e um District is intensified by the brief tune span in w h i c h this g r o w t h has occurred; d u r i n g the past three years, and the next three years c o m i n g , six new •wildings, including the Heck Building of Museum District looking south along Montrose Boulevard. the M u s e u m of Fine A r t s , i l o u s t o n , w i l l have been completed. 1 Glassell School, MFAH Lime and Hugh Ray Cullen Sculpture Garden, I. Hoguchi, 2 Administration and Junior School Building, MFAH designer, Fuller & Sadao, architects, 1966. Brown Pavilion, 3 Jung Institute MFAH, ludwig Mies von de Rohe, architect, 1974, 4 Contemporary Arts Museum in background. 5 Museum ol Fine Arts, Hauslan 6 Audrey Jones Beck Building, MFAH 7 Richard and Annette Bloch Ploia 8 Fannin Sec vice Building, MFAH 9 Houston Museum ol Natural Science 10 Garden Center, Hermann Park 11 Museum ol Health and Medical Science 12 Children's Museum of Houston 13 Houston Holocaust Museum 14 Clayton Genealogical library 15 Cullen Sculpture Garden, MFAH The Museum of Fine Arts is, in fact, Pavilion. The parking lot at the Bisson- the historical reason for the area's poten- net-South Mam corner belongs to first tial and a primary agent of its future Presbyterian Church but is used by coherence. Yet there are some disturbing Museum of Fine Arts patrons. The expan- decisions that may well undercut the se e, block-long curving facade ot the success of this fragile district, illustrating Brown Pavilion, whose form echoes the the lack of a bigger picture, of a vision curve of the street, implicitly borders an that extends beyond the needs of separate urban space, only hall of which is actual- institutions. Yesterday's back door could tings, a campus has essentially developed of the l.illie and I high Roy Cullen ly part of the Museum ol Fine Arts be tomorrow's address. History shows due to the exigencies of available proper- Sculpture Garden (1986), This loose chain precinct. The real museum parking lot is that assumptions easily can get inverted ties near the original facility. The Alfred ol facilities almig Montrose has resulted the so-called north parking lot, some four without a larger plan or broader, inclu- C. Gtassell, Jr., School of Art (1978) was in a curious urban condition. The Cullen blocks up South Main. A prominent sign sive intentions. the first obvious satellite to the campus, Garden, designed by Isamu Noguchi, has directly facing the entrance to the muse- The Museum of Fine Arts (William in part a means of gaining more internal irs primary entrance at mid-block on um on Bissonnet, posted by the church, Ward Watkin, architect, ll>24, 1926) space by pulling the museum school pro- Bissonnet between Montrose and South confirms the good-neighbor relationship originally formed part of a 1920s ensem- gram out of the original building. Mam, across the street from the central but makes the real ownership of the terri- ble that grouped it with the (then) Hotel Curiously, the school's entrance and its front door of the museum's Brown tory perfectly clear. Warwick, Shadyside subdivision, the oval The most recently completed facility sunken garden at the oblique intersection for the campus is the museum's Admin- of Montrose Boulevard and South Main, istration and Junior School Building and the axis from Montrose into Her- (1994), which is "out in left field," so mann Park. Its "front door" was archi- to speak, across Montrose on the block tecturally delineated by the treatment of bounded by Berthea and Bartlett. its south facade. As architectural histori- Designed by Carlos Jimenez (with an Stephen Fox illustrated in "The Kcndall/Heaton Associates), it is a taut Museum of fine Arts. I loustoii: An composition that shows it can conceptu- Architectural History, 1924-1986,"! as ally belong to a larger context through late as 1948, expansion plans reiterated controlled adjustments in its form. The this grouping, including a study by con- site Jimenez was given provided a situa- sultants Hare ik Hare ot Kansas City tion demanding clever corroboration with for additional museum facilities in a cul- [he other Museum of Pine Arts buildings tural center sired on the Cullinan estate in reappropnate a presence within ihe property within Shadyside, which borders group. The education and administrative West en Ira nee, Administration ond Junior School Building, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Carlos Jimenez Architectural Design Studio, directly on the site of the museum's origi- architect; Kendall-Heolon Associates, Inc., ossociote architects, 1994. components are operationally separate. nal front yard. This all changed with a but both had to be housed m the new L- provocative master-plan proposal from shaped building. Ihe school was orga- Kenneth Iran/hcun in 1952. Franzheim nized in a two-story wing facing Bartlett proposed recognizing llissonnet Avenue's Street, making north light available to the new presence in the city (resulting from a studios. The administrative offices occupy realignment through to Bin/., east of the three-story block fronting on Mon- South Main I by giving the museum a trose, where a barrel-vaulted, rounded new front door, as well as, more tellingly, metal roof gives added scale to the princi- by locating a one-way drive-through between Montrose and South Main, effecting service and public access inter- nally, particularly to an auditorium. The Mies van der Rohe master plan ot 1954 and eventual realization in Cullinan Hall 11 958) and expansion in the Brown T T Pavilion 11974) pragmatically completed • . V I r transferral of the front door to the • Bissonnet side of the building; 1001 Bissonnet became the museum's address. Monlrose Boulevard entrance, Administration and Junior School Foyer, Administration and Junior Schoonooil puiioingBuilding, MFAHm r * n . Building, MFAH. ft If expansion of museum facilities had been an issue in the mid-1950s when associated on-site parking lace north, there were 4,000 objects in the collection, toward Bartlett Street, away from the l i —i the collection's tripling to 12,000 works museum itself. Funding initiatives F in 1970 and then more than doubling involved in establishing the permanent FU -CLT 3 again to 27,000 works by 1992 height- home lor the museum school also set the ened the difficulty of a managed expan- stage for the resale of the corner properly sion. Excluding Bayou Bend and Rienzi, at Montrose and Bissonnet to the City of which house important portions of the Houston Parks and Recreation i Z I D X I I L I L P • museum's collection in residential set- Department to advance the development First-lloor plan. Administration and Junior School Building, MFAH. 10 Cite 3 4 Spring 1 9 9 6 C i t e 34 S p i n g 19 9 6 r Audrey Jonej Beck Building, MFAH, Rofoel Moneo, architect: Kendall-Henlon Associates, associate architects, I 9 9 4 - 9 4 . Perspective view ol model looting southeast from Ihc rorner of l i n i ond South Main strrets kept separate through this internal divi- (ilassell School, and its seemingly casually sion. The two building blocks arc inter- angled wall, something like 37 degrees, locked on the third level, where the is rigorously constructed to align with graphics and publications offices sit the Montrose entrance to the (allien atop one end of the school block. Sculpture darden, and, by geometrical The site design is notable for having extension, with the center line of the gar- clearly zoned parking bands that channel den's entrance across from the Museum circulation to the reentrant corner of the of bine Arts entrance on Bissonnct. L form. Such a corner entry is one of the Materially, the composition of anodized most difficult formal problems in design, aluminum, limestone, standing-seam A. West (Main. Slreel) devotion. but by the iconological "weighting" of metal, and occasional sections of glass the primary block, the main entrance is block refers to elements in the other cam- properly placed perpendicular to and pus buildings. The result is an elegantly directly into the corner.