Federal Panel Rejects Plans for U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Member of the Federal Commission of Fine Arts rejected Friday designs for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, saying that the museum’s hexagonal shaped memorial, the Hall of Remembrance, protrudes too far into the street.

But the architect, James Freed of I. M. Pei. New York, said he is concerned that changing the plans will make the memorial look like an adjunct to the adjacent government buildings.

“The memorial will be treated like an office building which does honor neither to the office building nor the museum,” said Freed, who told reporters after the meeting that he was “very disappointed” by the Commission’s reaction. “I’d rather not do it at all than make it look like the office buildings,” he explained.

Freed said there might have been a “misconception” among members of the Commission that could be resolved before the matter is voted on again June 19.

LARGE, TALL, MULTI-PURPOSE BUILDING

Freed’s design calls for an atrium-like Hall of Witnesses to function as the focal point of the five-story, block-long museum, which will have three flights of permanent exhibitions, a learning center, archives, library and an international computerized data retrieval center. The building would encompass 250,000 square feet.

The Holocaust museum, which will cost an estimated $45 million to $50 million to build, will be located on Raoul Wallenberg Plaza here and stand between the Auditor’s Building and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. Also planned are a large plaza with a grove of trees, water and reflecting pond.

Freed, a German refugee who was appointed architect for the museum in November 1986, said he was completely stuck on how to proceed with the project until he visited the Nazi concentration camps.

“It was an extraordinary challenge to make a building that would fit into Washington and explain the unusual nature of its contents,” said Freed. “I realized that a Holocaust museum is like other buildings in that it is didactic and it teaches, but it is very different from other buildings in that it deals with horrible and unthinkable things.”

HALL OF REMEMBRANCE MOST CONTROVERSIAL

The most striking and controversial part of the building design is the Hall of Remembrance, connected to the museum, which would feature a skylit ceiling. It would be simply done with a wall for candles and seats.

“(The museum) was not a design easily reached. It was tested 14 or 15 times and the Hall kept getting smaller until it was three quarters of its original size,” he said.

But although the members of the Commission of Fine Arts praised the minimalist style of the building, they agreed with chairman Jay Carter Brown, who said “a standard urban design shouldn’t protrude into the parking space.”

Only State Senator Roy Goodman of New York City, who left before a final vote was taken, suggested that the plans be approved, noting that “because of the unusual nature of it (the museum), it can be set back a little and given further exposure than conventional.”

THE LATEST CONFLICT

The rejection by the Commission is the latest in a series of conflicts in construction of the museum which came to a head last December with the resignation of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel as chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

Another bone of contention was voiced at Friday’s meeting by Werner Hasanberg, an economist and Holocaust survivor, who is objecting to the naming of different sections of the museum after contributors.

But members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council are expecting that Freed’s plan, which was approved by the Council on April 28 and still needs to be cleared by the Capital Planning Commission meeting next month, will eventually be approved by the Commission of Fine Arts.

“I don’t consider it (the Commission’s rejection) a setback,” said Museum Director Arthur Rosenblatt. “It was the first appearance of the plans and no one knew what would be said.”

Rosenblatt said “extraordinary progress” has been made in construction of the museum and he still hopes to break ground by fall. At that rate, the museum could be finished by 1992.