Judge issues reprieve for Gettysburg Cyclorama building

For more than a decade, Los Angeles architect Dion Neutra has waged a personal battle to save his family's controversial legacy on the Gettysburg battlefield.

A half-century ago, he worked alongside his world-famous father, the architect Richard Neutra, on the construction of the Cyclorama Center, designed to house the massive, circular painting depicting Pickett's Charge.

In 1999, the National Park Service announced its intention to move the painting and tear down the aging building - which sits smack in the middle of the battle line where Union troop defended Cemetery Ridge - in order to restore the landscape to its 1863 appearance.

The decision touched off a battle between Civil War purists and modern architecture preservationists that may have reached its conclusion in federal court in Washington this week.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan sided with the modernists. In a ruling Wednesday, Hogan wrote that the National Park Service failed to comply with federal law requiring that it analyze the impact of the Cylcorama demolition and alternatives to destroying the building.

"This is another chance to take another look at it," said Neutra, who along with the group Recent Past Preservation Network sued the government to save the building. "Narrowly speaking, the park could jump through some hoops and tear building down, but we hope they revisit the idea of reusing it."

The case will no doubt reignite controversy over the Cyclorama building, just as a new battle is erupting over revived plans for casino at a conference center few miles to the southeast.

Controversy has stung the military park headquarters, too. The defendant named in the suit, former park superintendent John Latscher, was ousted in 2009 after a scandal over pornographic images found on his work computer.

Matthew Adams, an attorney who represented the plaintiff in the case, said he hopes the decision will open fresh discussions with the Park Service.

"We're very pleased," said Adams, whose firm, Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal LL, represented the Recent Past Preservation Network, a group dedicated to preserving landmarks that are 50 years old or fewer. "Our goal is not just to obstruct the process, but to look at ways to protect the battlefield and protect the building."

Neither Gettysburg National Military Park officials nor the National Park Service would comment on the court decision. The park has said that it considered the 20th Century building an incursion on the historic landscape of Pickett's Charge, where Union forces held back a Confederate assault on the third day of the battle.

The park tore down the original visitors center and parking lot next door to the Cyclorama last year and had planned to demolish the Cyclorama building next as part of its plan to restore the 1860s-era Ziegler's Grove.

Andrew Ames, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said the agency is "reviewing the court's decision."

"No determination has been made as to the government's next step in this matter," said Ames.

Just as Pickett's Charge was the high water mark of the Confederacy, the federal court ruling may signal the zenith for the modernist movement.

The Cyclorama Center, which opened in 1962, was conceived as part of a federal effort under President Eisonhower to build visitors' facilities at national park. The timing of its construction was coordinated to coincide with the Civil War centennial.

"It has great architectural significance," said Jason Hart, a Boston architect whose firm has dreamed up an array of design possibilities to save all or part the building. Hart said it was meant as a monument to President Lincoln, who delivered the Gettysburg Address only a few hundred yards away at the National Cemetery.

"There are those who say it doesn't have anything to do with Gettysburg, but the opposite is true," Hart said. "It has a lot of meaning and value to Gettysburg."

Neutra, 83, said the Cyclorama was "way up" on his father's list of the most important buildings of his career. Architectural luminaries like Frank Gehry and Robert A.M. Stern agreed, sending letters of support of saving it.

Neutra has watched the building deteriorate since the painting was removed for restoration in 2006. Now he wants to be a part of its rebirth - "if they'd hire us again."

He said he recently discovered that his father had a broader vision for the museum than simply housing the painting.

"He wanted to commemorate the Gettysburg Address as opposed to just commemorating the battle," he said. "The idea was for a monument to address the notion of reconciliation as Lincoln had tried to do in the Gettysburg Address. We could do that in a dynamic way today."