At 50, Marin Civic Center comes of age
John King
Updated 6:41 p.m., Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Few Bay Area buildings attract the ongoing interest of the architectural world. None resonates on as many levels as the Marin County Civic Center, which turns 50 on Saturday.
It is the last major work of Frank Lloyd Wright, the most celebrated and problematic architect the United States has produced. It's also his most accessible - two linked buildings clad in beige concrete arches that span three hills alongside Highway 101 in San Rafael, row upon row upon row, topped by a broad low dome of blue that contains a public library.
Designed not long before Wright's death in 1959 at the age of 91, the complex glories in the contradictions of the impressions that it makes.
The three tiers of arches, each tier more rapid and rhythmic than the rest, take cues from Roman aqueducts. The public entrance is a narrow escalator that transports you to a long sky-lit passage as smooth as a shopping mall. From there the building is an old-fashioned joy to experience on foot - an utterly different sensation than the kinetic sweep when gliding past in an automobile at 65 mph.
Some aspects have not weathered well, such as a streamlined roof that binds the arches visually but has leaked almost from the start. Overall, though, what has endured for a half-century is that rarest of buildings: a popular favorite that also holds lessons for architectural scholars.
"Its relationship with Wright's other work is incredibly significant," says Victor Sidy, dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture in Arizona. "More than most, it's a true realization of his ideals about society."
The day Wright agreed to take on the Civic Center commission, July 30, 1957, he spoke to an audience of several hundred people at San Rafael High School. He praised the county's natural beauty, made fun of real estate agents and described his theories of organic architecture, the ideal that buildings should seem to emerge from their site, "architecture that is humane ... out of nature, for nature."
Then Wright went further by arguing that Marin had the chance to witness something noble and new, a three-dimensional essay on the relationship between government and governed.
"Architecture is the blind spot of our nation," he said. "Here comes a crucial, critical opportunity to open the eyes, not of Marin County alone but of the whole country, to what people gathering together might do for themselves to broaden and beautify their lives."
That brand of ambition could only come from a man who in one court case described himself, under oath, as "the world's greatest architect." It antagonized conservative residents of Marin, forerunners of today's Tea Party naysayers, who attacked the Civic Center as a needless extravagance.
Fifty years later it is Wright's view that has triumphed. His creation indeed is organic, sumptuous curves poured across the landscape beneath a long low sky-blue roof, yet futuristic enough that the building was used as a set in the science-fiction movies "Gattaca" and "THX-1138." Above all else it is confident - embracing at once the natural setting of the tumbling hills and the imposed potential of a structure where citizens can check out a book, go on trial, get married and grab a quick lunch.
No matter that inch for detailed inch, the pairing of the county's administrative building and Hall of Justice falls short of such Wright masterpieces as his V.C. Morris store (now the Xanadu Gallery) on San Francisco's Maiden Lane.
The architect visited the site once, then took his propulsive vision and added theatrical flourishes that can also be found on such late works as a Greek orthodox church in Wisconsin. The working drawings were prepared after Wright's death by Aaron G. Green, a protege who was the associated architect for other West Coast projects by "the master." Several planned elements of the center were never built, including a children's zoo and lakeside amphitheater.
Again, no matter. The captivation is the broad strokes, not the fine grain. That's what led Ada Louise Huxtable in her 2004 biography to describe the finished product as "his last great project ... the building shatters convention for a solution of remarkable environmental amenity."
All his life, Frank Lloyd Wright expounded on what architecture could say about America, about democracy, about our connection to the land. In his 90th year he had the chance to turn rhetoric into reality, and the Bay Area is lucky to live with the result.
Anniversary event
Several events related to the 50th anniversary of the Marin County Civic Center will be held Friday and Saturday
at the branch library in the building's dome, including a ceremonial cake-cutting at 1 p.m. on Saturday. Attendees are encouraged to dress as though it were 1962.
The Marin County Free Library's information page on the history of the civic center, including oral histories and a recording of Frank Lloyd Wright's 1957 talk, is at bit.ly/Q9nlcu
Place appears on Wednesdays. John King is The San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @johnkingsfchron
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Marin Civic Center no easy task
John King
Published 4:18 p.m., Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Frank Lloyd Wright's Marin County Civic Center looks and feels effortless. The saga of its birth is contorted and strange.
The tale began in 1957 when Wright was selected for the project by four members of the county Board of Supervisors. The one who objected, anti-tax crusader William Fusselman, kept fighting. He routinely challenged aspects of the contract for the next four years and purchased ads in county newspapers where he went beyond financial issues to, on one occasion, ridicule Wright's design as "a mail order job."
There were attacks on other fronts. When Wright appeared before the board to sign his contract, an American Legion member stood up and read a letter accusing the architect of being a communist sympathizer. When the cover of Marin's 1959 telephone directory featured an illustration of the planned civic center, the county's Taxpayers Association accused Pacific Telephone of "propagandizing such a controversial matter."
Wright died the same month the phone book came out. Construction began in 1960. But that year also saw the election of two supervisorial candidates who had attacked the building as a too-costly "Taj Mahal" - and at the first meeting after they were sworn in, the newcomers and new Board President Fusselman ordered work on the project to stop.
Fusselman claimed the move was driven by the desire to convert the unfinished building into a county hospital and "put first things first." The citizenry felt otherwise: When the Marin Independent-Journal hastily printed a mail-in ballot asking residents whether or not they approved of the board's action, project supporters carried the day by a 7-to-1 ratio.
The board soon reversed its vote, grudgingly. Later that year, one of the opposing supervisors was recalled. The civic center's first phase opened on Oct. 13, 1962, and Fusselman lost his bid for re-election two years later.
- John King, [email protected]
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