THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 15, 1995 TAG: 9510130070
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 148 lines
IT WAS EARLY autumn at Norfolk Botanical Garden, and a profusion of foliage and flowers thrived outdoors in the shrill sunlight.
Inside Baker Hall, the Garden's new visitors center that opens today, architect Carlton Abbott was bathed in a different kind of light. The diffused glow emanated from a translucent skylight atop the center's high gable roof, one of the distinctive features in this inviting public structure.
``This is the new gateway to the garden,'' proclaimed the award-winning Williamsburg architect, whose specialties include visitors centers, parks and museums.
``There is some boldness in this idea - in the kind of structure it is, in the way we put it together,'' Abbott said. ``Yet, I think it has a nice feeling that traditionalists will like as well as people who like contemporary.''
Soon, thousands of visitors would be tromping through Abbott's 11,900-square-foot building, seeking directions, perusing the gift shop, watching an orientation video and buying tickets for the train and canal rides that wind lazily through the 155-acre garden.
But in the days leading up to ribbon-cutting, Abbott could assess his firm's work in relative quiet.
The only breaks in silence came from gift shop workers, busily setting up displays of gardening books, vases and ergonomically correct garden tools in a sales area more than triple the size of the current shop.
And, just outside the entrance, employees with Spencer Building of Virginia Beach made a slight commotion as they installed a grill in a sculptural fountain made of huge, uncarved granite chunks.
The new center upgrades the image of the Garden, provides much-needed extra space and, most essentially, orients patrons.
Until today, visitors entered the Garden, drove around to the parking lot, then wondered which way to go. With the new center, which faces the lot, it becomes clear where to begin.
Head for the sunbeam trusses with the giant clothespin at the apex.
The center's distinctive roof - friendly and barnlike, yet sophisticated - could be unique to Norfolk.
``That truss may exist some other place, but I've never seen it,'' Abbott said. ``It radiates to the skies.''
And those vertical wooden elements dangling from the ceiling's ridge? ``Those aren't so much structural as visual. See the lights in them?''
The elements resemble the original Shaker wooden clothespins, a suggestion harmonious with a garden setting. Shakers, after all, invented the seed packet and were great gardeners.
But the apex gadget also resembles a four-legged space ship with a jet engine - also an appropriate image, with Norfolk International Airport next door.
The closeness of the airport was taken into account in the building's design, Abbott said. Courtyard walls on either side of the atrium help lessen noise and wind, as do the draft lobby and the interior use of wood and sound-absorbing wall material. It was even considered that the splashing of the fountain would provide a white noise to diminish the intermittent roar of takeoff.
With its symmetrical wings thrust from a great hall, the visitors center strikes a welcoming posture.
``The way it's designed, it's almost like a person with its arms out, pulling you in. Greeting you,'' said Peter Lawrence, the Garden's director of marketing and development.
Twelve sets of columns cum trusses support the 35-foot-high roof, which stretches 140 feet from the parking lot entrance through the building and into the garden.
Passing through the hall, gift shop manager Lynn Clark had a sudden insight as to what the experience of the long roof resembled. ``It's like crossing a covered bridge,'' she said.
The 3,000-square-foot atrium can be rented for about $1,500. To encourage such use, a catering kitchen is on the premises. At night, spotlights tucked between beams will create a dramatic appearance.
The steel columns, from floor level to 6 feet, are clad in a rough finish granite quarried in Mount Airy, N.C. Granite from the same quarry was used for the fountain.
From 6 feet on up, cream-painted timbers rise to the trusses, which fan out toward the roof line like sunbeams - or tree canopies.
It is in the trusses that Abbott's analogies to nature begin.
With the trusses, Abbott said, ``We wanted a treelike effect.''
``We had different shapes we tried. I remember, I drew this one out on a napkin. It's got a freshness.''
Abbott scanned the atrium, pointing out the delicate red oak grill work that covers some walls and creates a vertical pattern on the marble-top reception desks, which roll away at night to become bars for cocktail parties.
``That grill work reminds me of garden trellises or latticework,'' Abbott said. ``It's that kind of contrast - those delicate details against the rough timbers and stone - that is what nature is about.''
The $2.9 million project, which includes the structure plus site work and landscaping, constitutes the first completed building in the Garden's $18 million master plan.
The project is part of a $9 million first phase, with $5 million raised by the Garden and a matching grant of $4 million from the city. Of those funds, $1 million went into an endowment fund, Peter Lawrence said.
The next structure to be built is an education building, with bids scheduled to go out in the next month.
``This is the first major new building we've had in the Garden in more than 30 years,'' Lawrence said.
It was in spring 1963 that the Garden's rotunda administration building and ``teahouse,'' now housing the Garden House Cafe and gift shop, were dedicated. Several thousand citizens gathered to hail the new facilities and to proclaim founding director Frederic Heutte a leader with ``imagination and genius.''
During the ceremony, Heutte was given flags for display in the rotunda by I.M. Baker Jr. of the Lakewood Civic League. Then the man's wife, Sarah Lee Baker, gave Heutte an oil portrait of himself.
The new visitors center is named for the same couple, who gave the Garden $1 million during the campaign. Sadly, Isaac Mitchell Baker will not be at the dedication for this building. He died June 19, at age 82.
There are no plans to tear down the 1963 buildings, which were designed by a Norfolk architect, Vernon A. Moore. The structures feature glass and stone facades, utilizing cobblestones pulled from the streets of old Norfolk during redevelopment. The most notable features on the Garden's early buildings are the zigzag roofs made of reinforced concrete in a so-called folded plate design.
Very '60s, Abbott said.
Yet, according to news clips from that time, Moore had a Japanese influence in mind, presumably hooking into the numerous connections Heutte had made with Norfolk's Japanese sister city - then called Moji, now Kityakushu.
Abbott and his associates thought they should acknowledge these buildings by keeping within their white-and-gray palette, neutrals that do not compete with the vast array of floral hues. The majority of the building is constructed from gray split-face masonry blocks.
Besides, said project architect David Stemann, ``I think the gray makes a nice backdrop. Somehow the green really sings against the gray.
``Eventually, we want those two wings to go away. And they will, as the landscape matures. Then we'll be left with this canopy that really draws you into the garden.'' ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD L. DUNSTON/Staff color photos
Carlton Abbott's design of Baker Hall Visitor Center ties in with
the Norfolk Botanical Garden rotunda administration buiding and the
nearby airport.
Abbott selected a white-and-gray palette to serve as a neutral
backdrop for the garden's colors. With the trusses, he said, ``We
wanted a treelike effect.''
Lynn Clark, manager of the Garden's gift shop, sets up displays in
the new center, which has a sales area more than triple the size of
the old shop.
by CNB