Woe Is Mies?

Bloomingdale's in the Medina Temple in Chicago. Photo by prblog, courtesy of Sarah B.

The Washington Examiner reports that the Fenty administration is talking to the Bloomingdale's corporation about potentially locating a new store in the Mies Van der Rohe–designed Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. If the Examiner's report is true, it suggests that the Fenty administration is no more serious about the fate of the library than the Williams administration. Less so, even.

Mayor Williams, at the very least, had identified a site for the library to be re-placed. Even if the Williams plan for the Old Convention Center (to be developed by Hines International and Archstone-Smith, and approved at one time by the City Council) only allocated 110,000 square feet for "civic use"—roughly one quarter of the area of the 400,000-square-foot Mies-designed library—it was, to be sure, a space.

Given that the proposed new library was intended to be a token aspect of an essentially commercial development at the Old Convention Center site, I find it far more credible that talks between Bloomingale's and the Fenty administration have focused on and will continue to focus on the prospect of the Old Convention Center site itself. Why would Bloomingdale's want to court negative press associated with replacing the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library—whose eviction from the Mies building has not (to date) drawn sufficient support from the community, despite aggressive promotion by Mayor Williams and significant developer interest? Why would Bloomingdale's want to take on the cost of renovation for the Mies facility when it could build a new store in a commercial center a few blocks away? Why also would Mayor Fenty choose to stake out a plan to draw a new Bloomingdale's into the city rather than to build a new library for the city (or whatever he perceives to be the solution to whatever he perceives to be the problem with the old library)? And if the whole problem is that the Mies building is so offensively ugly and unmanageable, what's Bloomingdale's see in it?

Complicating matters further, the MLK Library was granted Landmark status by the Historic Preservation Review Board this year. The Historic Landmark and Historic District Preservation Act of 1978 safeguards landmark sites against alterations, including any "change in any interior space which has been specifically designated as an historic landmark". Landmark status protects modern designs from terrible "solutions" intended for changing tastes—like, for example, University of Maryland architecture professor Roger Lewis's proposal in the Washington Post last month. (Building something on top (!) of the Mies is supposed to accomplish what, now?) Makeup counters along the long, uninterrupted planes of Mies's lobby might not technically count as "alterations"—but proposed changes to the building have typically involved keeping the "shell" and gutting the insides.

That's not an option, now. Does Bloomingdale's realize this? I see every incentive for everyone involved to leave the Mies be and look toward the Old Convention Center site.