Long Library, desgined by Walter Netsch of the world famous firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is listed among the100 greatest international architectural achievements of the 20th century. Of the buildings listed in the U.S., most are coporate headquarters, private residences, museums, or churches. The few academic buildings are usually in large universities. Wells is one of the few small American colleges with a world famous modernist buidling. For a complete listing, go to Great Buildings and click on the Modern Link. For more information on the library, see see the March 1969 issue of Progressive Architecture.

DOCOMOMO is an international organization of architects and design professionals which aims to document and conserve important buildings of the modernist movement throughout the world.This worthy non-profit group has come to the defense of three threatened buildings on the Wells College campus: Long Library and it's partner S.O.M. structures, Barler Music Hall and Cambell Art Studio.

These items are below, along with a message about the Wells Master Plan from Walter Netsch himself. NEW

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Letter from a DOCOMOMO official
Reprinted here with permission

April 3, 2001

Lisa Marsh Ryerson, President
Wells College
Aurora, New York 13026

Dear President Ryerson:

I am not an alumna of Wells College, but am trained in architectural history and have worked in architectural journalism for years. This experience has taught me to appreciate architecture across the full spectrum of style periods and to make judgments on quality and significance rather than date and style. I have been following the Wells College's master plan project and ask that you consider the following points before proceeding.

Campuses are small urban units-- little towns in themselves. They mark in a very physical, visual way the development of an institution. Consider a few of the well known older campuses--Yale, Colombia, MIT, Harvard--they all integrate structures from different areas and architectural style periods as visual history of their past and of their constant evolution as an institution of learning.

To erase important buildings that mark years of growth at Wells College and an earlier history of enlightened architectural commissions, is trafficking in nostalgia. Should the proposed plan go forward, no one will be fooled. The new site plan and buildings will communicate exactly what they are: 21st-century attempts to mimic something from a previous era that never existed on campus in its own time. This is not how an Institute of higher learning directs its academic growth, so why should new campus architecture suggest it?

In the late 1960s, when the leadership of Wells College commissioned new buildings by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, and specifically Walter Netsch, they were bringing the best work of the decade to your campus. In fact SOM had completed the world-renowned Beineke Library at Yale University just three years before starting work on Long library. Wells College was in good company in the postwar years. Universities across the country were expanding their campuses with Modern movement buildings. These same institutions are now renovating and preserving what they created. The list is huge, but for example, MIT has fully restored its Alvar Aalto dormitory, Yale University has recently renovated and added to the Yale Art Gallery to create Holcome T. Green Hall, a new building for the School of Art. A benefactor has just given $20 million to Yale to restore the Art and Architecture Building, a controversial Modern building if ever there was one. The list could go on. Columbia University just completed the avant-garde Lerner Hall on the southwest corner of the campus' main quad. The Lerner family provided $25 million for a building program that would clearly marked its place in real time, not wishful, picturesque copies of times past.

My background spans architectural history and building renovation. From my experience in the field I must raise issue with the administration's response to practical issues always raised by expansion. The ADA has been with us for years, and in those years there have been only a handful of buildings that defy adaptation for handicapped access--the most of these were built before the revolution. If you hire architects and engineers with a track record and some specialization in renovating existing buildings they can bring these mid-century buildings into compliance with ADA laws as well as upgrade their infrastructure for current technology. If Long library, Barler Hall or the Campbell Studio are no longer large enough for their current functions they could be expanded or reused for different purposes, matched to their features. The proposed demolitions are purely an issue of personal preference, with an architect selected to go along with that preference. To hide the decision behind any practical concerns is unethical.

The new master plan for Wells College is being driven by the personal tastes of a small cadre of nostalgic insiders, maybe even one voice more strongly weighted than all the others combined. This is a most risky approach for an institution with a long history to protect and a new century to mark.

Sincerely,
Kathleen Randall
New York, NY

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Article from DOCOMOMO Newsletter, Spring 2001
Reprinted here with permission

Lisa Marsh Ryerson, President of Wells College in Aurora, New York, announced the Wells College Master Plan in October 2000, including �removal of the Long Library, (and) the Barler/Campbell Arts complex.� The college�s plans to demolish the only three modern structures on campus, and to replace them with, in Ryerson�s words, �historically beautiful buildings,� has resulted in a quietly growing movement to save those buildings.

The Louis Jefferson Long Library, designed by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was dedicated in 1968. Constructed of brick and glass with heavy timber structural elements, it is an example of Netsch�s Field Theory, in which he attempted to release the grid from its conventionally static role and conceptualize it as a dynamic field through which he could create open and active spaces. The library covers 55,000 sq. feet, with space for 250,000 volumes in open stacks, and can accommodate 300 readers at carrels, desks, and in the private nooks created by the nine interlocking star shapes.

Netsch applied his Field Theory to the library, stating �you have a sloping site, an irregular site, and to try to put down a symmetrical pattern on that site was irrational. You were just forcing something. And so � I developed this combination of three rotated squares � so I automatically had an eccentricity that I could move about on this sloping site.� Netsch also singled out the Wells College library as one of the favorite academic libraries he designed, characterizing it as �e. e. cummings � personified in a library.�

The two other buildings on campus in danger of destruction were also designed by Netsch. These two buildings, the Barler Hall of Music and the Henrietta Campbell Art Studio, were opened in fall of 1974; they were designed as an architectural complement to Long Library, and also based on the Field Theory. Netsch described his concept of the two inter-related buildings as �a field of forms to serve Music and Art.�

The destruction of these three architecturally significant buildings is part of a Master Plan developed for the college by Holt & Co Architects of Ithaca, New York, with Grace Chiang heading the project. Hundreds of alumnae have signed a petition of protest, which will be presented to the Board of Trustees in early May. To support the effort and protect these buildings from demolition, please write to President Ryerson, Wells College, Aurora NY 13026, and copy Board President Patricia Tyler van der Vorm.

Note: The Walter Netsch quotes are taken from the Oral History of Walter Netsch, an interview with Betty J. Blum in 1995, and compiled under the auspices of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project, Department of Architecture, The Art Institute of Chicago, � 1997-2000. For floor plans, a site plan, elevations, photographs, and a full description of the library, see the March 1969 issue of Progressive Architecture. By Victoria Brzustowicz

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Letter from the President of DOCOMOMO-US
Reprinted here with permission

1 May 2001

Ms. Lisa Marsh Ryerson
President
Wells College
Aurora, NY 13026

Re: Proposed Demolition
Long Library
Barler/Campbell Arts Buildings

Dear President Ryerson:

As DOCOMOMO US, the American chapter of an international organization involved in the preservation of modern and modernist architecture, we must strongly object to the proposed demolition of the modern buildings on your campus.

The buildings as designed by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, are thoughtful works of art and deliberately small in scale to fit the campus but were executed in an architectural vocabulary reflecting its own period.

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, a major firm of the post war period has been responsible for quintessential modernist architecture. Walter Netsch is not only a major designer in his own right but also falls within the modernist tradition of that firm with such other giants as Gordon Bunschaft or Bruce Graham. The modernist architecture in general and the work of SOM in particular has become the subject of significant restoration and preservation efforts in other campuses across the US. For instance, Yale�s School of Architecture by Rudolph or SOM�s US Airforce Academy in Colorado Springs.

The decision to demolish these buildings and the expressed desire for the architecture of an earlier is surprising and somewhat ironic for a college teaching liberal arts. The Victorian architecture so desired today was very much disliked only a few decades ago. To �edit� history by removing those post Victorian additions and to reinstate a past that never was at the expense of modernism would seem to be in contradiction to the very principles of liberal arts and humanities.

We must urge to reconsider and restudy your plans. Modernism and certainly outstanding examples like those on your campus deserve attention, preservation and careful adaptation. They are an integral part of the past and should not be �edited� out.

Theodore H. M. Prudon Ph.D., AIA
President
DOCOMOMO US

Cc Ms. Patricia Tyler van der Vorm
President, Board of Trustees, Wells College

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Email from Walter Netsch, March 11, 2001
Transmitted with permission

The architectural history professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, Mr. Robert Breugman, has talked with the historian at Cornell. Robert and I found and reviewed the proposed new master plan for Wells with a lot of other material including full endorsement of the plan by the Board. This information is available at the Wells College web site: www.wells.edu/whatsnew

The proposed plan essentially converts the informal east-west student pathway to a tree lined allee (Bartlet pear?) in honor of Mr. Wells as "Wells Way." It extends from the east parking lot through a dorm gateway to a plaza in front of Macmillan at the west end with a sculpture base and a STAGE COACH.

Immediately west of Main, is a formal landscaped approach to the Amphitheater with direct paths to the adjacent New Chapel. This monumental walk requires the distruction of Long Library and a portion of the Art Center.

Above the Amphitheater is the proposed New Chapel, accessed by the circumferntial service road and ascending paths to the forested parking, which provides parking for the events at the Amphiteater and Chapel.

The New Library and New Student Center formally face this proposed landscape approach to the Amphitheater and New Chapel. This is the reason both the Art Center and the Long Library are scheduled for destruction.

This reminds me of the experience I went through in designing the Air Force Academy, with the Chapel high on a hill overlooking the campus. The consultants to the Secretary of the Air Force were Ero Saarinen, Welton Becket, Wallace Harrison, and Pietro Belluschi who took me to task for my "medieval attitude towards religion in the 20th century," especially for the young cadets whose immediate predecessors had fought in the sky in WWII.

The consultants felt that the structure should be moved to the campus and become available for part of the cadets daily life, rather than a symbol. This I did. Now the Chapel contains not only the original Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish Chapels, but in addition access to a Buddhist and Muslim chapel in place of a small inter-denominational Chapel I had provided. So now each has the opportunity to follow the rituals of their beliefs.

The largest chapel, by reason of cadet number, is the Protestant Chapel which follows US Air Force protocal. The largest chapel now is having the acoustical system revised, as the cadets have developed on their own a rock mass. This music requires a tremendous change in sound elevation, much more than the antiphonal choir, the organ, or the ministers. So, the building is more than a symbolic event and a part of our diverse culture. The consultants were right and even the visitiors, who number in the millions, see the campus as well as the Chapel.

Robert Breugman, the historian at UIC, has reviewed the new plan and considers the proposed plan an "affluent waste as well as a destruction of two fine projects." He suggests that the New Chapel could be on the vacant entry loop road, available to all: the students, their parents, visitors, the handicapped, and be part of the academic environment instead of an isolated symbol. It appears that like myself, today the young designers sometimes overdo iconic symbolism.

You have my permission to forward this message.
Walter A. Netsch, FAIA

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