Showplace on the Prairie

Elegance in design revives a decaying town

Columbus, Ind., was clearly on the way down. Only a generation ago, its business area and residential neighborhoods were decaying, bored young people were leaving to find work elsewhere and the municipal future seemed all too bleak. Today Columbus (pop. 30,000) is a city transformed. Rising dramatically on a flood plain between Indianapolis and Louisville, it has become a bustling, vital community, a showcase of contemporary architecture--and the envy of urban redevelopers everywhere.

There are no fewer than 41 modern buildings, all designed by nationally and internationally famed architects. On Sundays, the citizens of Columbus worship in churches designed by Eero and Eliel Saarinen. They borrow books at a library built from the innovative plans of I.M. Pei and embellished with a bronze arch sculpted by Henry Moore. They shop in a glass-enclosed piazza designed by Cesar Pelli, and send their children to schools conceived by Architects Harry Weese, Eliot Noyes and John Warnecke. Along with the distinctive new structures, the spirit and pride of Columbus have risen as well. All over town, old commercial buildings and residences are being fully restored. As Mayor Max Andress puts it, "A sense of quality has rubbed off all over Columbus."

The city's master builder is J. Irwin Miller, a civic-minded industrialist and former president of the National Council of Churches who is sometimes called "the Medici of the Middle West." In 1939, Miller startled Columbus by choosing the great Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen to design a new building for Columbus' First Christian Church. But it was not until 1957 that Miller really shook up the old town. By then he was board chairman of his family's Cummins Engine Co. and was concerned about the difficulty of attracting talented young executives to Columbus. So he announced that the Cummins Engine Foundation would foot architectural fees for any public structure designed by a distinguished architect. Explained Miller, now 68: "You can't pioneer any more by hacking out new land. But you can through architecture."

Miller had already set the example by hiring Eliel's architect son, Eero, a friend since they studied together at Yale in the 1930s, to build what would become one of the country's first banks with all-glass walls and an atrium-like interior. The town fathers soon followed Miller's cue, recruiting famous architects to design eleven stunning new schools, including an octagonal brick, glass and wood edifice by Chicago's Harry Weese. As the architectural contagion spread through Columbus, Saarinen fils wrought a hexagonal house of worship for the North Christian Church, which he topped with a soaring spire that is affectionately called "the oil can." In a friendly ecclesiastical rivalry, the First Baptist Church then got Weese to concoct a striking, almost medieval-looking church, with a steeply pitched slate roof, on the windy plain at the edge of the city.

While these monuments were rising, Columbus ordered the prominent firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to develop a master plan for the seedy downtown area. The piece de resistance was an enclosed piazza, called "the Commons," designed by Pelli. Opened in 1973, it has dozens of shops, a felt-covered, injury-resistant playground for youngsters, and space for everything from bluegrass concerts and art shows to town meetings.

Despite its preoccupation with the new, Columbus is preserving and enhancing the old. Left standing chic to chic with the sparkling Commons, for example, is Columbus' carefully refurbished, century-old courthouse. Along the main and residential streets, dowager-like Victorian commercial buildings and houses are being lovingly restored, often by young people who prefer downtown to suburbia. Many of these handsome relics have been converted into fashionable shops, including an elaborate 1890s ice cream parlor, complete with Tiffany lamps and highly polished, original fountain hardware. When the town decided to build a senior-citizens center, it did not start anew, but rebuilt an abandoned old power plant, carefully preserving vaulted ceilings, overhangs and other fin de siecle features.

Some townspeople are less impressed by the renaissance than the 40,000 visitors per year who come to tour and gaze at Columbus' architectural wonders. One landlord whose commercial property was razed to make room for Pelli's piazza calls it "the Red Square of Columbus." Others grumble about the cost. Indeed, a dissident group took over the board of education on a cost-cutting platform a few years ago, only to be turned out of office after one term. The townspeople, in effect, voted against false economy. Though the open, brightly decorated schools are expensive to maintain, they provide a stimulating climate and have been virtually untouched by vandalism. Even in low-income neighborhoods, the schools remain almost unmarked. Explains Principal Smith Snidely: "The poor of Columbus differ from those of other cities. There is a sense of civic pride no matter what the economic circumstances."

In fact, the great majority of Columbus residents wholeheartedly endorse the experiment in architectural excellence. They have been rewarded not only by the dramatic change in their cityscape, but by a new atmosphere of optimism and excitement that has enabled Columbus to attract new businesses, brought cultural enrichment and, most significantly, kept many of its once restless young people home on the prairie.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.