Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1962-07-15
Cities
and People
Lafayette
Square
BY ROBERT l. LEWIS

- tects for buildings in
Lafayette Square suggests,
happily, that the 18th CEN
tury is not yet dead.
For awhile, some people
were beginning to suspect
that any recollection of what
was good architecture in the
past was somehow Subver-
sive, and that only cold,
blank, vast, and impersonal
buildings are valid in the
present age.
The individual architect
was getting to think that he
should feel embarrassed, dis
loyal or unclean If he didn't
always try to come up with a
design that could be palmed
off as modern" or "contem-
porary."
A few giants had so well
brainwaShed the profession
with slogans like LESS Is
More" and Form Follows
Function" that unless an
architect copied the by-now-
outworn and hackneyed cur
rent cliches he was made to
feel he was not engaged in
productive effort at all.
Not only had the profess
sion, itself, been BRAIN
washed. The world, by now,
had been brainwashed, too.
And it's the world that pro-
videS the commissions for
architects.
So who could blame the
practitioner-before the re-
cent Lafayette Square deci-
sion - for abhorring the
thought that he might derive
inspiration from beyond the
immediate past? To do so
was to invite disdain, and
risk being snubbed as an
"archeologist" instead of an
architect.
THE KENNEDYS now ap-
pear to have changed all
that.
Safely on record in favor
of more contemporary de-
sign in Government build
ings, they have dared to speak
up, also, for preserving, and
reproducing, the kind of
human scale buildings which
the 18th century made so
symbolic of the urban scene.
Circumstances had reached
the stage early this year that
only personal interest on the
part Of Mrs. Kennedy could
have saved Lafayette Square
from further great change
and unintentional brutaliza-
ton.
That William Walton, the
artist and writer who is a
friend of the Kennedy fam
lily, played a significant role
in the choice of the new ar
chitect, is evident.
In mid-March, John Carl
Warnecke came to Washing
ton to serve on a jury with
MIR. Walton to select the
winning design in a COM
petition for a Federal
Bureau of Prisons psychiatric
hospital. AS Attorney Gen.
eral, the Presidents brother,
Robert F. Kennedy, had a
personal interest in the de-
sign of this hospital.
Through Mr.. Walton, the
President and his wife were
informed of the general ap-
proach Mr.. Warnecke, the
new architect now in charge,
believed was justified to pre-
serve the Small-Scale char
acter and atmosphere of the
square.
Both the President and his
wife believed destruction of
the Dolly Madison house on
the squares east side should
also be avoided, though Mr..
Kennedy at one time was
resigned to losing it.
CLEARLY, the influence
of Mrs. Kennedy has now
called up for reappraisal
the architectural professions
relatively new doctrine that
to be acceptably derivative a
building cannot suggest that
good architecture existed at
all before Mics van der Robe,
LIE Corbusier, Walter Gropius
and Frank Lloyd Wright be-
gan to brainwash their COL
leagues.
This is not to suggest that
a massive reaction against
fresh approaches to the de-
sign of buildings is about to
begin-or that such an anti
historical development would
be either logical or accept
able.
But the Lafayette Square
decision does imply to the
profession there is nothing
shameful about the 18th CEN
fury, or beyond, and that