
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 22, 1995                   TAG: 9505230012
SECTION: EDITORIALS                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROBERT FRANCE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

REHAB AND REUSE

THIS SPRING, Roanokers have marked the rebirth of our "grand old lady on the hill." In this well-deserved celebration, it is hard to remember that only a handful of years ago the future of the hotel looked gloomy indeed. In 1989, the Hotel Roanoke stood stripped and empty. The furniture and fittings had been auctioned, the hotel market had bottomed out, and time was running out for Virginia Tech to find a partner. No one seemed to want the old lady.

To the unending credit of Tech, the financial and business community, city government and especially the people of the Roanoke Valley, this situation was turned around while the hotel could still be easily rehabilitated.

Now that the Hotel Roanoke is open and thriving, it is time to turn our attention to the other great legacies of the Norfolk and Western Railway. In particular, it is time to focus on the hotel's closest neighbors, the NW General Office Buildings.

The General Office Buildings are Roanoke's heritage. For decades, the block of Jefferson Street between the NW offices and the Hotel Roanoke was the heart of Roanoke's mightiest corporation. Generations of Roanokers spent their working lives within these buildings. Like the hotel and much of the Gainsboro neighborhood, they hearken back to the Roanoke Land & Development Co., the railroad development firm that rebuilt Roanoke during its boom years.

But Roanoke's heritage is not limited to railroads. Roanoke's heritage is commerce, and the power of hard work and a vision of progress to transform a sleepy farm community into a vibrant commercial center. The General Office Buildings represent this power and vision. The NW chose purposely to build from local materials. Built on a framework of the same steel that sustained the railroad, they are faced with common brick. The buildings may be, as the architectural historian Ann Carter Lee has called them, "palaces for the lords of industry," but they are also monuments to the simple realism of the working man.

The General Office Buildings are Roanoke's skyline. Glance to the east next time you pass downtown on Interstate 581. The office buildings' distinctive, complex shape provides the perfect background for the hotel. Their colors - Roanoke River sand and NW red - blend harmoniously with their surroundings. Their scale - though grand - is perfectly appropriate for the city center buildings.

And both are excellent works of architecture. The earlier building, closer to the tracks, shows a uniquely Southern approach to the design of the modern office building. The taller 1930s tower is the masterwork of Roanoke's great local architect, Paul Hayes. Together they are an enduring part of Roanoke's architectural wealth, and of Roanoke's character.

The Roanoke Valley has many possible futures. All of them require the sort of character that the General Office Buildings bring to the city. Will Roanoke become a center for conferences and conventions? Conferees come to cities that are memorable. A destination for tourism? Tourists love the human scale and historic verity of the current downtown. A site for new industry? Industry follows money, but when two regions compete equally with regard to money, business looks for quality of life. Quality of life is not measured in square feet of developable land. It is measured in personality.

Through wise decisions and good luck, the city of Roanoke has kept a consistent and pleasant personality. In this, most credit must go to the people of the valley, their friendliness, and their choice of a relaxed, human pace of living. It is not accidental, though, that this personality is most easily found in the City Market, where the human scale of the architecture promotes easy mingling, and where there is a continuity of tradition dating back to the turn of the century. Saving and reusing the General Office Buildings will extend these same advantages into the key space between downtown and Gainsboro, between the Hotel Roanoke and Henry Street.

There are as many uses for the General Office Buildings as there are futures for Roanoke. Saving the buildings is consistent with developing the downtown, with redeveloping Henry Street, with making the downtown railroad corridor an axis for tourism and commerce. The buildings could be happily reused for retail, offices, public spaces or downtown housing. They present opportunities for an exhibition hall, or a downtown center for job training or college outreach. Any combination of these uses would be appropriate to the buildings' form and location.

A program for reuse will not appear by itself, however. Rehabilitating these buildings will take the same sort of careful planning and inventive partnerships that saved the Hotel Roanoke. We must search for a combination of appropriate uses, make realistic plans, identify finances and communicate together.

In short, to save the buildings we need the values that the buildings enshrine: realism, vision, hard work. If we persevere together, the people of the Roanoke Valley can ensure that the General Office Buildings are Roanoke's future.

Robert France of Roanoke is a past president of the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation.

by CNB