Monday, August 16, 1999
COLUMN FOR: The Virginian-Pilot
BY ALEX MARSHALL
At the end of the movie Casablanca, Ingrid Bergman pleads with Humphrey Bogart to stay with him, and to let her husband, the courageous underground leader Victor Lazlow, fly off by himself.
As the prop plane beats it propellers against the air, Bogart, playing tough guy “Rick,” looks down at her and says, no way.
“You’ll regret it,” he tells her in his sandpaper-and-velvet growl. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.”
That’s how I feel about tearing down Kirn library in Norfolk. That if we do it, we’ll regret it, and soon, and for the rest of our lives. (Imagine Bogart saying these words, in that accent that I now realize sounds vaguely like President John Kennedy mixed with Marlon Brando.)
Huh, you might ask? “I didn’t even know they were thinking about tearing down Kirn.”
Well “they” are. A study committee has recommended building a new central library elsewhere downtown. Even more important, city council members are eying Kirn as a potential spot for a new upscale hotel. Under this plan, the city would sell off the property, perhaps using the funds for a new library.
Sure, any such events may be far off. But I’m talking about it now, because I know how things work in Norfolk. By the time the process gets around to public hearings and comment periods, plans will set and difficult to change. If “we” want to keep Kirn, we need to start talking about it now.
Beauty is a funny thing. It reflects, I think more and more, the relationship one has with an object, as much as the object’s inherent characteristics in space and on the ground.
Kirn was built in 1960-1962, financed in part by a grant from the Kirn family. Built as part of the urban renewal process that was then tearing apart the city, this sleek masterpiece of glass, steel and marble rose on its site on City Hall Avenue, now directly across from the MacArthur Mall. It was Norfolk’s first real central library. In replaced the beautiful, but small Carnegie-funded library on Freemason Street, whose building still stands, but which unfortunately the city no longer owns. The architectural firm of Lublin McGaughy designed Kirn; contractor Paul Tishman built it.
Forty years later, Kirn has lost the aura of modernity, speed and style with which, like a hot new sports car parked on a corner, it used to greet passerbys. Its three stories and a mezzanine now seem small and short against the bulk of the MacArthur Center, and height of the main street towers. Kirn is now often unnoticed, always under-used.
But look twice at Kirn. Look three times. Notice the way the tall marble planks stretch up its sides. Notice the abundance of steel and glass. Notice how proudly it sits on its corner, directly addressing the street.
For an even better viewpoint, stand inside Kirn on the mezzanine level. Notice how you can see right into the street because Kirn’s “walls” are actually entire sheets of glass. Notice the luxurious floating marble stairs that lead you gently to the mezzanine. Notice how the building is literally stuffed with the black-streaked marble, around you at every turn.
And then I think it will hit you. Kirn is beautiful. An example of 1960s modernism at its best, all steel and glass, an open building, revealing its structure and interior to the world like someone with nothing to hide.
Historic preservation, I’m realizing, is not just about nostalgia. It’s about recognizing that different eras have different strengths. We could not replicate a Kirn library today, because building trades have changed, technology has moved on, and the eyes of present-day designers are different. Because of this, it makes sense to keep the best of every era, because we are keeping something that can’t be replicated, a language that, if erased, will no longer be spoken.
I love libraries. And it shames me that Norfolk has so long neglected theirs. When I was a boy growing up in Virginia Beach, visiting Kirn was something special. That’s no longer true.
But there is nothing wrong with Kirn that a strong wind of fresh cash couldn’t fix. A wind that swept old books off shelves, that expanded the public parts of the library into neglected corners and floors, a wind that made every corner glisten with love, attention and staffing.
Sure, a great central library might eventually need more room. But with the demolition of the old Board of Trade building, Kirn possesses an entire city block. This is as much room as San Francisco’s new downtown library. When time to expand, an addition can be built on the land now used for a few parking spaces. In fact, I hear there are dormant plans around for just that. Kirn could even go upward, building additional stories on top of the ones that exist
What Norfolk doesn’t need is another new mega structure, flanked by a giant parking box, isolated from the rest of the city. It needs buildings like Kirn, that fit into the streetscape, and that are intimately part of the fabric of downtown life, and the city’s history.
Don’t write an unhappy ending to this movie. Think once, twice, three times, before doing something that we may someday regret, “and soon,” and for the rest of our lives. Let’s stand by Kirn, as it has so nobly stood by us.