Niagara Gazette
August 06, 2008 05:26 pm
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Lamenting Wintergarden
I just read Rick Forgione’s article about the Wintergarden. He included comments from people that will miss it. I am thinking back to when I first saw the structure, inside and out in 1979.
We visited my parents in Lewiston then, and my mother was very eager to show off the new Wintergarden. She loved it and would be among those who would miss it. That was the first time that I saw it. The collection of glass in those shapes held up by steel facing the sun was clearly an architectural interest in using the sun after the energy crisis of 1973 that haunts us even today.
When we entered inside, the humidity was very high and the temperature warm for all the plants. The building was very successful for that purpose then. Indoor plants made a huge presence in buildings after the first Earth Day in 1970. This Niagara Falls architecture, combining indoor plants and using the sun with a dramatic use of glass and steel in a more interesting fashion than Mies Van der Rohe ever did was a success then that city planners and building officials wanted. Who wouldn’t?
But architect Cesar Pelli did not plan ahead for maintenance. This steel and all those windows to keep clean seemed to me to be a permanent nightmare 29 years ago. If it were not the steel handrails on a stair, it was a steel angle holding a glass skylight well over 100 feet above me. Wintergarden was never really planned to be a permanent structure I think and that is what I want to say to you. Too much sanding, grinding, prime paint, two coats enamel and keep that Windex coming. Someone at Niagara Falls Urban Renewal then should have asked how long the economic life of all this steel and glass would be and how much the energy bills are in the face of the national energy conservation movement well under way in 1975 when Pelli finished the drawings.
I enjoyed this shape and location very much then. Bought a souvenir T-shirt, too. I think that Niagara Falls got over 10 years longer than is possible out of Wintergarden. You will be happier with a new plan altogether there — not this ill-planned relic sitting the way it does now.
Frank Fletcher-Broucek
Chicago
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