Coming Out of the Scaffolding: Chicago's First LGBT Center In recent American memory, gays and lesbians have been the self-designated keepers of the historic urban fabric. Their preservationist urge has saved whole districts from neglect—Will Fellows detailed it in his 2004 book A Passion to Preserve—and it’s common knowledge among real estate investors to “follow the gays” when searching for the next neighborhood to undergo gentrification. Image courtesy Gensler Fittingly, LGBT community centers also reflect preservationist elements, either by adapting old spaces or combining them into larger campuses. The most recent melding of old and new takes place in the

Empire State Building Lobby Getting a Makeover Image Courtesy Beyer Blinder Belle Although not generally known for its ground-floor views, the Empire State Building—which recently topped an AIA poll of Americans’ favorite buildings—may soon give visitors a reason to linger at street level. The lobby of this Art Deco skyscraper, designed by William Lamb and completed in 1931, is being restored. A plastic-panel dropped ceiling in the lobby, added in the 1960s, is being removed. In its place will go a re-creation of the original ceiling, a gold-leaf-on-canvas abstraction of planets and stars. A re-creation, rather than a restoration, is

Libeskind Tower to Perch Atop Hummingbird Centre How do you build an icon on top of an icon? That’s the thorny question posed by Studio Daniel Libeskind’s new residential and arts complex in Toronto. At 50 stories and 550,000 square feet, the planned tower aims to be a major addition to a theater that's a local Modernist landmark. The Hummingbird Centre, completed in 1960 by English-born architect Peter Dickinson, is a limestone-clad, fan-shaped theater that has often been compared to London’s Royal Festival Hall. The Libeskind design wraps a curvy, L-shaped volume around two sides of the existing structure. Its

The Alameda, "San Antonio’s Apollo," Receiving a Makeover In its heyday, the Alameda Theatre was as important to San Antonio’s Latino population as the Apollo was to African-Americans in Harlem. The 2,400-seat, Art Deco Moderne theater opened in 1949—during the height of Jim Crow laws—“but in the theater, it didn’t matter what your last name was, or your color, you didn’t have to sit in the ‘colored’ balcony,” recalls Henry Muñoz, III, chairman and CEO of Kell Muñoz Architects, who attended performances there as a child. Photos: © James Murdock But after several successful decades, the theater fell into disrepair.

Herzog & de Meuron's "Pirate" Seizes Hamburg's Skyline'and Its Imagination A warehouse on Hamburg’s waterfront is being transformed into the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, the architectural equivalent of Greta Garbo or a pirate ship—take your pick of these analogies, the former offered by future tenant Christoph von Dohnányi, chief conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra, and the latter by architect Jaques Herzog, of Herzog & de Meuron. Images: Courtesy Herzog & de Meuron As contradictory as they might seem, both analogies are apt. Von Dohnányi says that the design, like the famously shy film star, “is very beautiful, but it doesn’t

Housing Takes Root in Former Grain Elevator Silo Point has been the tallest structure on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor industrial waterfront since 1923—and, thanks to zoning ordinances, will likely remain that way for many years to come—but it is gaining a new use. Parameter, a local architect, is transforming this 290-foot-tall grain elevator into more than 200 condominiums. Images: Courtesy Parameter The 430,000-square-foot complex consists of the reinforced-concrete elevator tower and an adjacent 130-foot-tall building that is ringed by metal grain silos. Turner Development Group, a Baltimore-based firm that purchased the site from Archer Daniels Midland in 2003, initially envisioned converting

Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download A plan to save Paul Rudolph’s Cerrito House, in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, has fallen apart and, in an exclusive, Paul Rudolph Foundation coordinator Nepal Asatthawasi tells RECORD that the 1956 residence was demolished yesterday. ArchitecturalRecord.com reported last month that a pair of New Yorkers was offering to move the house to the Catskills—a complicated deal, it turns out, that would have given

Boots Motel along Route 66 in Carthage, Missouri Photo: Courtesy Jim Ross/National Trust for Historic Preservation   The National Trust for Historic Preservation released its 2007 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Places today. It includes everything from individual buildings, such as the abandoned Brookline, Massachusetts, residence of the 19th century architect H.H. Richardson, to entire landscapes threatened by the construction of new power transmission lines in seven Mid-Atlantic states. Since initiating the list of Endangered Places in 1988, the Trust has successfully worked to save 52 percent of sites from destruction. A few of the places on this year’s

Paul Rudolph’s 1960 Blue Cross/ Blue Shield Building in Boston broke aesthetic and technical ground while respecting the scale of a historic streetscape. But the developer of a proposed new skyscraper has sketched it out of the picture, and the building’s fate is now uncertain. In Cleveland, meanwhile, county commissioners approved plans this spring to demolish Marcel Breuer’s 1971 Cleveland Trust Tower. Although these buildings have their admirers, they challenge entrenched notions of historic preservation and highlight an ongoing debate about saving Modern buildings. They also serve as reminders of lingering hostility toward much postwar architecture. “It’s difficult for people

RMJM, an Edinburgh-based architecture firm with 700 employees and 11 international offices, is set to acquire Hillier Architecture, based in Princeton, New Jersey, reliable sources tell Debra Rubin, of RECORD’s sister magazine, Engineering News-Record. RMJM says that it has projects in more than 15 countries worldwide in a wide range of industry sectors, including education, commercial, industrial, residential, scientific research, healthcare, and public buildings. Hillier, which had $69 million of revenue in 2006, declines to confirm the transaction—but sources tell Rubin that it has been on the block for some time. The deal is set to be announced June 19.