New home,
new name
DESIGNERS SEE OPPORTUNITY IN SLENDER LOT
African American Arts and Culture center
rises uptown
Modernist structure wrapped in glass and
metal
RICHARD MASCHAL
rmaschal@charlotteobserver.com
Slideshow: 3 views of new arts center
The new building at South Tryon and Stonewall streets will have 46,490 square feet, more than four times the current space.
When the building opens next year, the center will become the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture, in honor of the former Charlotte mayor and civic leader.
It will house the Hewitt Collection, 58 works by 20 African American artists, including Charlotte native Romare Bearden, purchased for the center in 1998 by Bank of America.
Both the current home and the new one are in Brooklyn, a predominantly black neighborhood that filled Second Ward, which extends southeast from Trade and Tryon streets.
Beginning in the '60s urban renewal flattened a neighborhood now home to government buildings and Marshall Park.
At first glance it looks like a throwaway site, a sliver just 45 feet wide and 400 feet long. What kind of building could be built on it? Something tall and skinny with walls like a billboard?
Architect Phil Freelon knew that was a common reaction to a plot at South Tryon and Stonewall streets. But given the task of designing a new home for the Afro-American Cultural Center, he and his colleagues looked beyond the limitations to find virtues.
Now the first fingers of steel are rising out of the ground for the $18.6 million building and passers-by can begin to see what the architects discovered.
The site is prominent, at uptown's southern end near the Convention Center and at the gateway to the Wachovia cultural campus. It is also in Brooklyn, once a well-known African American neighborhood with buildings and institutions, now lost to urban renewal.
"Our approach was to say, `Wait a minute, if we can explore this a little bit we might think there's an opportunity for something unique, something powerful,' " said Freelon, president of the Freelon Group in Durham.
The designers came up with a modernist structure wrapped in glass and metal that draws inspiration from African quilt-making, the spiritual Jacob's ladder and a historic school for black children.
"I love it," said Bob Bertges, director of corporate real estate for Wachovia. "I honestly think it's one of the most dramatic buildings" in the cultural campus.
A building with meaning
Bertges, overseer of the six-building complex Wachovia is spearheading for the city, suggested the unusual site. The dimensions, he knew, would be a challenge, to say nothing of another wrinkle. The building would be built over two underground tunnels connecting College and Stonewall streets to a parking garage beneath Wachovia's 48-story corporate tower under construction across Tryon Street.Bertges told the architects, "I don't know whether it will work or not. But if it can work, it will be one of the most visible places when we enter our city."
The architects designed a building 40 feet wide, 360 feet long and four stories high, scheduled to open in late summer 2009. They fit in galleries, multipurpose space, classrooms and offices.
But they wanted more. They wanted a building filled with meaning.
Metaphor and cue
A key discovery came from Brooklyn, a neighborhood of churches, schools, businesses and homes that once stretched from South Tryon to McDowell Street. It was the Myers Street School, Charlotte's first public graded school for black children, founded in 1882.
A bell topped the building, its peal calling children to class. Also, as a photograph taken in about 1915 shows, a stairway rose to the second level. Looking like an inverted "U," it helped give the school its nickname, the "Jacob's Ladder School."
That feature, said Freelon design principal Rick Kuhn, gave the architects a metaphor and a cue on how to solve two problems.
One of the underground tunnels, the one for cars running off Stonewall Street, passes over the service tunnel for trucks and so splits the first floor about in half. Also, getting people around could be a problem. An entrance at one end could mean asking visitors to walk down a long corridor.
So the designers fashioned a Jacob's ladder, placing stairs, escalators and elevators on the first floor leading to a lobby on the second. They put it near the building's center so people entering on Tryon or College would not have far to walk.
Dramatically visible through almost four stories of glass, this inverted "U" will lead people up to exhibits and performances and so, symbolically, up Jacob's ladder. They will go "higher and higher," in the words of a song that for generations reflected African American aspirations for freedom and opportunity.
"We're quite proud of the fact that we've done that," said Kuhn.
A quilt wrapper
Another problem with a four-story building on a tight site was huge exterior walls, particularly facing south. A blank wall at such a prominent spot would be deadly.Again, the architects sought inspiration, this time searching out African textiles and African American quilts and art. Kuhn said they were drawn to lively patterns of lines and dots. These sources, too, offered a way to add meaning.
The south wall will be broken into patches of colored metal joined by quilt-like seams. The wall wraps the facade as would a quilt, with openings to reveal the Jacob's ladder, the windows on the top floor and a rooftop terrace.
The north facade facing uptown also will be divided into patches made of perforated metal that will let some light bleed through.
For Deon Bradley, president of the Afro-Am, the designers found ways to connect the center to African American history in Charlotte and the world.
The new building, he said, is "going to help elevate the center from that small little church on the outskirts of Charlotte to an incredible edifice in the heart of Charlotte."
