The LuLac Edition #4,606, October 27th, 2021

 WRITE ON WEDNESDAY 

Our "Write On Wednesday" logo. 

This week we provide a real historical treat. We look at the Wilkes-Barre Preservation Society's First Annual Awards ceremony from Monday evening. Here are remarks from Tony Brooks regarding this event. These was a presentation prepared by Kira Kinsman, AIA to the Wilkes-Barré Preservation Society - October 25, 2021 read by Executive Director Tony Brooks. 

HISTORY PRESERVED 

Good evening, honored guests and preservation fans, my name is Kira Kinsman and I’m a partner at Williams, Kinsman & Lewis Architecture with a 30-year history of professional practice in the City of Wilkes-Barre.  Thank you to Tony Brooks and the board of the Wilkes-Barré Preservation Society for such an honor.

Tonight, we are gathered to salute two historic preservation projects, two unlikely projects in fact, and I say this because since I began practicing in 1992 as the Spring Brook Water Company Building had sat empty and at risk of demolition, and the North Street Memorial Presbyterian Church was later in a similar situation albeit much more recently.

Historic restoration projects are invariably costly because they have to overcome the obsolescence that accrues to all aged buildings. This is the sort of impediment to preservation that often can only be resolved by an Owner with both powerful vision and compelling practical need, with the assist of a municipal entity with the foresight to understand that an investment in the best aspects of its past is actually an aspirational and higher level of investment in its future.

The Spring Brook Water Company Building to the King's College's Mulligan Center for Engineering:

There were very specific reasons in each case as to why preservation and renovation presented high-bar challenges for these two historic buildings: the Spring Brook Water Company had a first floor with three separate levels.  Buildings today must be accessible, and Spring Brook’s floor plan was so fractured that only a rather dramatic solution could bring the early 20th Century Neo-Classical gem into compliance with modern building codes.

The solution that left the magnificent North Franklin Street facade fully intact was the construction of a new combined elevator and stair tower behind the building. This was the crucial decision that was necessary for an Owner to make in order to revitalize this piece of Wilkes-Barre’s history and to return the Spring Brook to life as a vibrant piece of our downtown. It wasn’t the least expensive route at first blush, but it was the solution that made every other part of the King’s College’s Mulligan Center for Engineering work. To be able to embrace a solution that may seem over-the-top at first, and to refine that solution to its minimum expression without compromising its effectiveness - this was the type of risk-reward assessment that only an Owner with a committed relationship to the community could find the confidence and resolve to advance.

The building’s exterior and interior were scrubbed, polished, and adapted to the new use as seamlessly as possible, taking every care to celebrate historical detailing wherever found, all in full conformance with National Park Service review and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Renovation. This renovation has extended the life cycle of the building for another 50 years, at which our city will have a stunning 160-year-old example of early 20th century American Neo-Classical architecture.

Memorial Presbyterian Church to the Chapel of Christ the King & The Maffei Center:

The renovated Chapel of Christ the King is an 1874 stone church rendered in a rustic Gothic Revival Style. Remarkably, the steeple itself is also stone, a rare feature in general and a unique architectural element in the City of Wilkes-Barre. The church’s electrical and HVAC systems were out-of-date, the parking capacity didn’t meet modern needs, and proper accessibility to the building couldn’t be developed without a significant investment in the site and the site infrastructure. This effort would ultimately require a range of approvals from the city, the county, the state, and the federal government via National Park Service review.

The renovation to the interior was comprehensive and included the relocation of King’s College’s Anthracite Coal Altar from another location on the campus - a transport operation that required great care and planning.  The sculptor was Edgar Patience, an African-American artist and Wilkes Barre resident who worked primarily with Anthracite coal as a material and who exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum. This iridescent altar is an enduring symbol of King’s College’s commitment to the education of the sons and daughters of the regional labor force, and it carries forward a powerful remembrance of the Wyoming Valley’s industrial roots and the contributions to our community of its ethnically diverse immigrant workers.  In this way, the new Chapel of Christ the King weaves its sacristy into the story of Wilkes-Barre and the Wyoming Valley, wedding the new to the old by telling a story of continuity and resilience.

The Chapel renovation project offers more than an ecclesiastical space, however. The nave is also re-purposed to function as a multi-purpose space for community events and performances by King's College’s Music and Choral programs. Significantly, a new addition provides accommodation for the spiritual support of the College’s academic community, as well as a home for existing and emerging graduate level studies. The George and Giovita Maffei Center is expressed as an auxiliary structure to the Chapel, taking the form of a cloister building that speaks in the language of stone and permanence, glass and transparency. By remaining simple in form, the Maffei Center cozies up alongside the historic building without copying or challenging the prominence of the Chapel’s rose-window facade or stone steeple.

Importance of Historic Preservation:

The real preservation lessons of the Mulligan Engineering Center, the Chapel of Christ the King, and the Maffei Center, center on King's College's belief in the value and vision of investment in the unique assets of Wilkes Barre’s River Street Historic District and the city’s historic downtown core.  Why is this so important? Because, as a society we take care of the buildings we love, and these buildings have now been cared for by a remarkable local institution with a mission to the long-term spiritual health and well-being of our town and our area.

What did it take to do this? It took a College with vision and a commitment to its community. It took a municipality that supported and facilitated the benefits of significant capital investments in its historic built environment.  And it took a large collaborative and multi-disciplinary team to implement the work. With this approach as a model and having undertaken to renovate two challenging older structures that many thought might be beyond saving, the community at large has a concrete example of what can be achieved with good will, tenacity, and creative financing.

We take care of what we love. To this day, and after enough unfortunate and defeatist demolition, Wilkes-Barre still has an astonishingly robust stock of historic fabric. The River Street Historic District has 248 buildings, a number that surprises even those of us who know it well. These two projects point the way to a Wilkes-Barre that supports what people across the world say they like - that is urban cores that link us to our past, and that beautify and enrich our daily lives in ways intangible yet profound.

WKL Architecture wishes to thank King’s College for its commitment and leadership. As local architects, it has been a great gift to participate in the long-term enhancement of our beautiful city.

Thank you for the opportunity to share these few thoughts.

~Kira Kinsman, AIA

Photos by Christopher James Bohinski. #historicpreservation