THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 26, 1994 TAG: 9412230044
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
Holiday lights are everywhere. Office buildings, shopping centers, factories, houses sparkle with them. The Virginia Zoo and the Norfolk Botanical Garden are aflame with images etched in light. Lights twinkle in windows and on Christmas trees.
Hanukkah, the Jewish eight-day Festival of Lights, came early this year, distancing it from Christmas, with which it often blurs. The festival marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem following the Jewish triumph over the Syrians.
The Federal-period Myers House in downtown Norfolk was the setting in early December for a historical observance of Hanukkah. Moses Myers, a leading merchant and citizen, had the splendid brick house built in 1792 and expanded five years later. Handsomely furnished, the house is now part of the Chrysler Museum. Each year 18,000 people, including history buffs and antique lovers, visit it.
The Myers House is an architectural and historical treasure - a tangible link to Norfolk's boom-and-bust economic, social and cultural past. Its civic-spirited owner enriched his adopted city and reveled in its progress. An achiever, he would applaud the success two centuries later of a member of the sixth generation of his descendants: architect Barton Myers.
Fifty-two of the Norfolk-born-and-reared Myers' architectural and urban-design achievements are the focus of a richly illustrated 286-page ``Master of Architects'' volume, Barton Myers: Selected and Current Works (Images Publishing: Australia) produced this year.
Amid 350 illustrations of theaters, townhouses, high-rise office complexes, hotels, colleges and much else is a small picture of the Myers House and a text speculating that his childhood memory of Norfolk ``is at the root of Barton Myers' urban-design preoccupations and his search for a denser, more diversified urban environment.''
Barton Myers, who was for three years an Air Force jet-fighter pilot after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, became a premier architect in Toronto, Canada, before shifting to Los Angeles, where he is based now. He is dedicated to fostering lively cities where structures old and new, commercial and residential, public and private are happily mingled. The re-creation of downtown Norfolk engages and pleases him, as it doubtless would his forward-looking forebear. Bright city lights, both. by CNB