Theatre Design & Technology - Feb 1968 - 17

Stifled outrage has pursued the planning, and now the construction, of the theatre that this country had forseen as the
truly ideal theatre of our time-the John F. Kennedy Center
for the Performing Arts, presently rising alongside the Potomac River in our nation's capital.
Urbanists are outraged because its location will not assist
in revitalizing downtown Washington. Architecture critics
shriek that the proposed building looks like a package of
pompous puffery. "Shame" is the cry of Washingtonians because the Center is not planned to provide a home for any
of their local performing groups; "just another road house"
theatre critics claim. Technicians, managers, and designers
contend that the facilities will be equipped to make our
national performing arts center a failure. And theatre gadfl ies have been outraged enough to ask theatre organizations
and individuals to speak out about it.
The subject is worth the risk (which is as perilous for critics
as the undertaking was for its planners and designersl
not because it is beneficial to cry over broken ideals, but
because, of all the 3000 new theatres to be built in this
country within the decade, the 58-mil ion·dollar Kennedy
Center is the most visible object lesson-a magnified microcosm of current theatre planning and architecture.

All these complaints, however, both the valid and the merely
niggling-come too late. The steel is going in at this writing. Besides, the Center has been under research and plan·
ning since 1958; and it is admittedly the most overconsulted building in the world. Can a 10-year preparation
by many experienced theatre planners really produce nothing
more than an outrageous failure? No, obviously outrage is
too strong for the facts, just as idealism is usually too perfect for the human condition. As Polly says to her infant
daughter in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, "Ah poor
child, you're no better than your mother-and no better than
you ought to be." However much this may be resigned acceptance, it is also the more appropriate reaction to what
we all justifiably feel-a disappointed idealism because the
most potentially venerable performing arts center in our
country \/¥ill have flaws of-any kind. And we must remember
that, after years without adequate performance facilities, our
capital will at last have four ceremonial halls.
Stalking the real villain in contemporary theatre construction
to learn lessons for the future, let us examine, soberly,
the four major areas of complaint about the architecture of
Kennedy Center-its siting, its program for constituent performing arts organizations, its aesthetics, and its component
facilities.

THE SITE. The 17 -acre site, appropriated by Congress in
1958 when the project was known as the National Cultural
Center (a name that is a good indication of unclear thinking
on the part of the originators), is in the area known as
Foggy Bottom, along the banks of the Potomac. This location
was chosen because, historically, it has been the route of
Washington's development: Always close to everything,
Foggy Bottom was an area of slums-the last to be improved between the march of the Mall's development on
one side, and the growth of Georgetown on the other.
Logically, it was long accepted in the minds of the District's leaders and its public alike as a suitable location for
monumental improvement--preferably for improvement by a
monument. Also, the specific property was the most immediately accessible to Congress and the least expensive
of several alternates. (One of them was on the Mall, none
on Pennsylvania Avenue, incidentally.)

FEBRUARY 1968

However, the site has been faulted by urban planners,
architects, and transportation experts on its own grounds.
Although these dissenters approve the picturesqueness and
monumentality of the riverside location-concurring with the
Center's architect, Edward Durell Stone-they claim that
this very monumentality is achieved (if also insured against
encroaching buildings) by a snarl of encircling highways-a
fundamental flaw in planning.
Planners also say the site is detached from the day-to-day
and night-to-night activity that any theatre such as Kennedy
Center needs-restaurants, after-theatre spots, real night
life. It leaves no space for these life-supporting facilities for
either audiences or performers.
In addition, they maintain, this isolation (in fact the impossibility of increased future density or intensity of nearby activityl makes the building of a nearby station on the proposed subway transit system economically unfeasible. And,
even if the station is built, it will be so far away that peddestrian access will be lengthy and exposed to inclement
weather. As a consequence, the Center will be solely dependent both now and in the future on the automobile and
a proposed shuttle-bus service. In this light, the 2: 1 ratio
of parking to audience seating (2 persons per 1600 garage
spaces beneath the Center for the 6560 seats in the four
theatres) appears painfully inadequate.
Why then has Kennedy Center not been relocated? To the
credit of the Kennedy Center's administrators, the current
demand that it be a part of the Pennsylvania Avenue redevelopment scheme, and thereby help to revitalize the
languishing downtown area, arose only in 1962-four years
after the land had been acquired and two years after the
Center had been completely redesigned because of revis.ions
in the original, "overambitious" budget. Even within the
committee for the rehabilitation of Pennsylvania Avenue
there was dispute over the "immovability" of the Center.
Because President Kennedy personally endorsed the present
Site, it is said, he exhibited no public reaction to the suggested relocation. Then, in an effort to expedite the construction as a memorial to his predecessor, President Johnson is said to have effectively opposed relocating the Center, which would have delayed it indefinitely.
Should the
site at the
the District
longer for
available?

building have been redesigned, again, for a new
expense of benefactors and the public? Should
have been "temporarily" deprived and waited
the "idea.I" downtown location to become

Professional feasibility studies, in fact, could have revealed
if the expenditure of additional funds for another redesign
would have been offset by greater economic gains to the
city from revitalizing the downtown area and increasing attendance. (They could not have revealed the benefit or
damage caused by the delay to the growth of our country's
theatre as a whole.) However, to make a monument, the
city's future was not investigated by such methods after relocation downtown was suggested.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Feb 1968