Park service joins dispute over historic Chautauqua landmark Plans to demolish and rebuild 121-year-old amphitheater continue to face opposition
A National Park Service architect who toured Chautauqua Institution’s historic amphitheater last month has urged the nonprofit’s leaders to have a structural analysis done of the 121-year-old landmark.
The amphitheater is a signature building at Chautauqua Institution, a Victorian-era lakeside retreat in southwestern New York that draws more than 100,000 people each summer for cultural programs, entertainment, classes and topical lectures.
Chautauqua’s leaders have raised $30 million in private money to demolish the amphitheater and build a replica of the building, which has a vast tongue-andgroove wooden roof that resembles a tent. A group of Chatauqua property owners, joined by historic preservation advocates, are opposing the plan.
Bonnie Halda, chief of the preservation assistance division for the the National Park Service, toured Chautauqua March 9 and 10. In a telephone interview, she said she had offered her assistance in a letter in December. Her office covers 1,000 landmarks in 13 states.
The amphitheater is one of 647 buildings in the 200-acre enclave that contribute to a national historic landmark district. Ms. Halda compared Chautauqua’s atmosphere and architecture to Cape May, N.J., a town filled with Victorian-era architecture that also has national historic landmark status.
In an April 14 letter to Chautauqua’s president, Thomas M. Becker, Ms. Halda suggested the nonprofit hire a professional engineer with expertise in historic
buildings who can provide “recommendations regarding the long-term stability of the structure.”
“We recommend that you continue to identify the character-defining qualities of the amphitheater and how these qualities could be preserved as part of the project,” Ms. Halda wrote.
Updating the amphitheater for the 21st century is a key goal for Chautauqua’s leaders, who have been discussing the project since at least 2011. Plans call for adding seats, lowering the orchestra pit, renovating the shabby backstage area and making it easier for large trucks to load in equipment.
The project became controversial last fall after Mr. Becker acknowledged that instead of restoring the wooden structure, the institution planned to demolish it and build a replica. After news of the demolition plan broke, Mr. Becker announced on Jan. 20 that he was postponing a decision about what to do with the amphitheater until August.
Arthur P. Ziegler, president and co-founder of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, compared the Chautauqua amphitheater’s soaring, concave wooden roof to buildings with the architectural stature of California’s Hollywood Bowl and the Great Tabernacle at Ocean Grove in New Jersey.
“We are surprised that the National Park Service has been invited to participate in planning only belatedly,” Mr. Ziegler said, adding that the amphitheater is “a nationally known landmark.”
Brian Berg, a Chicago resident whose family owns property at Chautauqua, cofounded The Committee to Preserve the Historic Amphitheater last year. The organization launched a website, savetheamp.org.
“We support the idea of an advisory panel but we’re disappointed qualified members from Chautauqua, the National Trust and The Committee to Preserve the Historic Amphitheater have been excluded,” Mr. Berg said. (Letters between Mr. Berg and the Chautauqua Institution president, along with a letter from another preservation supporter, are published with this story at post-gazette.com.)
“We have not done a comprehensive assessment of the amphitheater,” said Jordan Steves, a spokesman for Chautauqua. “There have been engineers here assessing what is necessary for this project.”
Foit-Albert Associates, an engineering firm based in Buffalo, N.Y., looked at the amphitheater in 2006 and returned in April.
Ms. Halda said Chautauqua should compile a single document that outlines all of the changes made to the amphitheater since it was finished in 1893.
Earlier this year, Dirk Schneider, a New York architect, proposed several ways to add more than 800 seats to the amphitheater. Last fall, the Committee to Preserve the Historic Amphitheater hired Mr. Schneider to draft plans to improve but save the historic building where Franklin Roosevelt delivered his “I Hate War” speech.
At the request of the Rochester Philharmonic, Mr. Schneider’s firm, CJS Architects, recently reduced the size of the Eastman Theater in nearby Rochester, N.Y.
Mr. Schneider’s plan for Chautauqua would deepen the orchestra pit by 11 feet, add 168 permanent seats at the structure’s corners and provide covered, temporary seating for sellout crowds. Improving the orchestra pit, backstage areas, sight lines and steps “doesn’t have to come at the cost of the aura of the building” or require demolishing a beloved red bridge where people often pose for pictures, the German-trained architect said in a telephone interview.
Architecture critic Paul Goldberger is dismayed by plans to demolish the amphitheater. “I think it’s a terrible mistake,” said Mr. Goldberger, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair magazine and a trustee emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The amp, Mr. Goldberger said, “exemplifies the very special quality of Chautauqua, which is casual and relaxed and yet serious and ambitious. It’s one of the only places I’ve seen that is sort of funky and monumental at the same time.”
Chautauqua, Mr. Goldberger added, has been, “built on the idea of evolution, not revolution. Of course every institution has to change to stay alive” but that gradual change, he added, should be “based on the best of what we inherit.”
Mr. Goldberger called Mr. Schneider’s plan, “an intelligent, creative and exciting proposal. ... They have shown that it is possible to bring this structure up to a 21st-century standard without destroying it and starting over. Chautauqua is about understanding the past to build a better present, and that is exactly what this design aspires to do.”
Each summer, between five and eight shows sell out at the amphitheater, Mr. Schneider said. He proposed adding temporary seating, covered by awnings, when there is a sellout.
He suggested building in seat risers in the corners, which would add 168 permanent seats. At the back of the amp are box seats out in the open. Those could be replaced with portable bleachers that come with a canopy. He also proposed lawn seating, adding that a sound system could be installed, just as it was outside another Chautauqua building, the Hall of Philosophy.