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“EMPTY CHAIRS, BROKEN LIVES”: THE OKLAHOMA CITY NATIONAL MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM BY MARTIN JOHN HOLLAND DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Landscape Architecture in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor David L. Hays, Chair Professor M. Elen Deming Associate Professor Christy Lleras Professor D. Fairchild Ruggles ABSTRACT This dissertation offers a description of the memorial and museum of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum; provides a critical analysis of the memorial process used to generate the institution; and, finally, documents a historical context that situates the bombing and the subsequent memorial within a rich and complicated urban history. The dissertation describes the constructed Memorial and the Memorial Museum in Oklahoma City, designed by Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg, built to honor the 168 people who died in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The Outdoor Symbolic Memorial is comprised of specific interventions that correspond with the particular identities of social groups affected by the bombing, including survivors, victims, children, and rescuers. I argue that these interventions – the Gates of Time, the Survivor's Wall, the Field of Empty Chairs, the Reflecting Pool, the Rescuer's Orchard, the Children's Area and the Survivor's Tree – form a memorial circuit, intended to be experienced through bodily engagement with the series of stations by a visitor. The Museum relies on re-enactment in order for a visitor to understand the traumatic experiences encountered by the people within the Murrah Building at the time of the bombing. The Museum highlights the generosity and courage exemplified by the people of Oklahoma in the immediate aftermath of the bombing during rescue and recovery operations - what came to be known and celebrated as "The Oklahoma Standard.” I argue that the Memorial and the Museum work in tandem. A visitor is encouraged to "experience the museum," where the exhibit strategies simulate the trauma experienced by the original victims. In turn, they are then encouraged to "visit the memorial," where they are soothed by the tranquil setting of the Butzer's design, an example of how nature is regarded as a restorative agent. The dissertation details and critically analyzes the memorial process including the initial public survey, the competition brief, the architectural competition, and the controversy that led to the firing of the competition advisor, Paul Sperigeren. This process began within days of the bombing, when a call for a memorial was put forward. The rush to memorialize was an attempt to provide psychological triage in the immediate aftermath of the destruction. It forestalled a sustained examination of the event and its possible meanings. It also had the effect of privileging the voices of victims and family members who had lost loved ones. Great deference was shown to the victims and family members throughout the memorial process, culminating in family members being the final arbiters of the memorial design competition. The Butzer’s design, with its distinctive element of 168 chairs, supplied family members with a specific location to interact with their lost loved one by leaving mementoes - the simple markers of the domestic sphere function as an example of what Kenneth Foote has called sanctification. Furthermore, the Reflecting Pool offers a tranquil, therapeutic space. The success of the Butzers' design can be traced back to the results of the original survey about people wanted "to feel and experience." Finally, the dissertation charts the history of the built environment of Oklahoma City from its founding in 1889 through to the dedication of the Memorial Museum in 2001. In addition, it traces the history of the site of the Murrah Building and the subsequent memorial grounds. This history includes a discussion of I.M. Pei's 1964 Master Plan for Oklahoma City. The urban analysis reveals that the implementation of Pei's urban renewal plan was piecemeal, where parts of the downtown were demolished faster than his vision could be constructed, leaving a large ii swath of undeveloped, and empty lots within the heart of the city. After the bombing in 1995, leaving the site of the decimated Murrah building as a urban void was not an option given the citizens' frustration with the glacial progress of the implementation of I.M. Pei's plan. The bombing put to rest longstanding political differences and allowed the city to finally spend tax revenue it had been collecting for two years to fund urban infrastructure. In addition, the bombing provided the city with a national identity, one exemplified by the Oklahoma Standard, which became a civic brand. This historical contextualization is significant for understanding the Oklahoma City memorial because it helps reveal the economic and political realities that were in play at the time of the bombing and throughout the truncated memorial process. In a sense, the Memorial Museum was part of a longer-term effort of civic boosterism. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 THE OUTDOOR SYMBOLIC MEMORIAL.......................................... 13 CHAPTER 2 THE URBAN HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA CITY................................. 80 CHAPTER 3 THE MEMORIAL PROCESS IN OKLAHOMA CITY ....................... 124 CHAPTER 4 “MEMORY WORK”: THE FINALISTS IN THE OKLAHOMA CITY INTERNATIONAL MEMORIAL COMPETITION .............................162 CHAPTER 5 EXPERIENCE AND RE-ENACTMENT AT THE MEMORIAL MUSEUM IN OKLAHOMA CITY ....................................................... 203 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 256 APPENDIX HISTORY OF THE JOURNAL RECORDS BUILDING ..................... 263 FIGURES ................................................................................................................. 268 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................... 384 iv INTRODUCTION On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder rental truck in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, lit the fuse of a 4800 lb homemade bomb (a concoction of diesel fuel and fertilizer) and walked away. The resulting explosion destroyed the federal building as well as two other structures nearby and caused the death of 168 people. The United States had experienced another terrorist attack just two years prior in 1993 with the World Trade Center Bombing in New York City, and the bombing in Oklahoma City was almost immediately portrayed as a fundamental strike against the nation itself. In provocative headlines and story titles, newspapers invoked notions of regional simplicity, tranquility and provincialism to alarm their readers and viewers. The CBS television network broadcast their news updates regarding the bombing under the moniker “Terror in the Heartland.” The effect that such reporting had was to increase public anxiety, implying that if a relatively small and homogenous American city such as Oklahoma City could be selected as the site for an attack, nowhere in America was safe. The Oklahoma City National Memorial was formally opened to the public just five years later. President Bill Clinton dedicated the “Outdoor Symbolic Memorial” on April 19, 2000, the fifth anniversary of the bombing. A Memorial Museum was later dedicated by President George W. Bush on February 19, 2001. The extraordinarily short span of time between the catalyst and the memorial did not go unnoticed. Cultural geographer Kenneth E. Foote, author of Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy, remarked upon the speed with which this major new national memorial was constructed: “It seemed to appear too quickly and on too grand of a scale for a site associated with mass murder and terrorism and of such potentially 1 equivocal meaning — that is, what would drive an apparently normal middle class American to attack hundreds of innocent civilians?”1 This dissertation explores the commemorative process in Oklahoma City, beginning with an initial survey conducted by the Oklahoma City Memorial Trust, followed by the establishment of an international competition for the design of the memorial and, ultimately, the construction of the memorial designed by Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg. In chronicling the compressed time frame of the commemorative process, I examine economic, political and social factors that were at work in the formation of the memorial complex, which ultimately included a Memorial Museum. The speed with which the memorial complex was established was a function of social and economic necessity and pertains to the determinative role that the victims and family members played throughout the memorial process in Oklahoma City. Speed was deemed necessary in order to privilege the voices of victims and family members, who were recovering from the trauma of the experience and grieving the loss of their loved ones. Just at a time when families and individuals were experiencing painful reminders of their recent losses, they were also being called upon by civic leaders for their thoughts about what should be remembered and how this could be accomplished. Family members