NCSU Libraries Wins Grant to Highlight the Legacy of NC Modernist Architects

Contact: dwhiscoe , NCSU Libraries, (919) 513-3425

(Raleigh, N.C.) ”The North Carolina State University Libraries Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) has received a substantial grant to make widely available the legacy of six North Carolina architects who played key parts in the evolution of modernist architecture in the second half of the twentieth century.

The grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) will support Changing the Landscape: Exposing the Legacy of Modernist Architects and Landscape Architects,  a two-year project to arrange and describe collections of drawings and other papers of influential modernist architects and landscape architects who changed their professions as well as the national and regional landscape. All practiced in North Carolina but had national scope and influence. The SCRC now holds 1200 linear feet of material from Matthew Nowicki; Lewis Clarke; Richard Bell; George Smart; Holloway & Reeves; and Biberstein, Bowles, Meacham & Reed. Changing the Landscape  will make the SCRC collection of these designers' works widely accessible to scholars and practitioners.

Containing over 40,000 original plans and drawings in both paper and electronic formats as well as related project files and records, the SCRC collections offer valuable insight to the history and evolution of modernist architecture. Among the works that this project will uncover are Nowicki's internationally-acclaimed J.S. Dorton Arena, unique for its saddle-shaped roof supported by steel cables in tension and held up by parabolic concrete arches in compression; Lewis Clarke's plan for Palmetto Dunes, Hilton Head Island; Richard Bell's Water Garden, an influential mixed used development; and Holloway and Reeves's North Carolina Museum of Art, done with the nationally renowned architect Edward Durrell Stone. These works reveal how the local practice of modernism changed the regional built environment as well as the cultural climate of growing cities around the nation.

Buttressed by NCSU's pioneering modernist School of Design (SOD), established in 1948, North Carolina became a renowned center of American modernism. Modernist designers with diverse backgrounds and approaches came together in a progressive environment and contributed to a change in the cultural climate of the South that continues today. These collections complement NCSU Libraries' already accessible collections of other modernists, including Henry Kamphoefner, George Matsumoto and Willard Byrd. These designers championed innovation and consciously rejected traditional forms and styles long associated with the Southeast. Lewis Mumford said about Nowicki in particular that his respect for modern principles helped win friends both for modern architecture and for the School of Design, during those early years when the principles of contemporary form were as yet neither understood nor accepted by any large number of people in the South  (Architectural Record, July 1954, p. 131).

During this project, staff will use and evaluate current best practices for the cataloging and description of archival architectural materials and create a model process that can be used by other archives to expose their architectural materials. The collections will be represented by web accessible collection guides and catalog records available through the NCSU Libraries' catalog, as well as national archival databases. Those interested in these collections and processing challenges can follow the project's blog when the project officially starts in February 2010.

According to Susan Nutter, vice provost and director of the NCSU Libraries, this project should refocus attention on NCSU as a place where innovative design and thinking happen. International scholars will benefit from the enriched research possibilities, while NCSU students will have the opportunity to engage with their intellectual forebears. The project is crucial to the NCSU Libraries' goal to create one of the premier architectural archives in the United States and to support teaching, learning and research in our community.  Other recent library projects to promote research on North Carolina's important architectural heritage include the online biographical dictionary North Carolina Architects and Builders and digitized drawings of historic buildings in Built Heritage and Beaux Arts to Modernism.

Changing the Landscape  is funded as part of a national program to identify and catalog hidden special collections and archives. Created in 2008 with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program supports the identification and cataloging of special collections and archives of high scholarly value that are difficult or impossible to locate. In 2009, fourteen projects were selected from among 91 full proposals submitted.

For more information about Special Collections in the NCSU Libraries, please visit the SCRC Web site . And more information about the Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program is available here .