Next weekend I’ll have the chance to see for myself something that’s been a long time in coming: the demolition of the old Cyclorama building at Gettysburg NMP. You can read a report and see pictures of the event here.
I first entered the Cyclorama building with my parents and my sister in 1967. At that time, it was the NPS headquarters for the park: the Electric Map and the museum in which it was housed were still in private hands. It had a small souvenir store and various displays, but the major attraction, obviously, was the Cyclorama itself. To see firsthand a painting which one had seen elsewhere in print was literally breathtaking; afterwards, we walked the special High Water Mark trail (I still have the booklet), including the road loop that went around the Armistead marker near the Bloody Angle (you can still see traces of that road, especially from aerial shots).
From there we hopped in the car (a 1962 white 2-door Valiant) and headed down to Little Round Top; I recall that my sister was wearing a styrofoam pith helmet (courtesy of a Shell gas station promotion) while I was decked out in my makeshift Union uniform (I did not know at the time that my ancestors who had served did so in Zouave units, which would have made a different sort of fashion statement).
The building served its purpose at the time it was built as a park headquarters (like several other park headquarters, notably First Manassas, its placement was in fact obtrusive), but it apparently did not do the job when it came to housing the Cyclorama properly. As time passed and the park acquired a new headquarters, the Cyclorama building became less a focal point of activity but remained an important stop, even if one did not always see the painting itself (the same was true of the Electric Map, by the way). Indeed, I will see the Cyclorama in its new location for the first time this month (I went through the museum several times before it became a pay-per-view enterprise).
With the opening of a new park headquarters that also housed the Cyclorama, the days of the old building were numbered. Those people who argued that it should remain standing as an example of the work of architect Richard Neutra were, to my mind, sadly mistaken, for Gettysburg NMP was not established to exhibit mid-twentieth century architecture that reminded me a bit of the buildings at the 1964-65 World’s Fair (most of which have also disappeared). Nevertheless, these people, aided by some bureaucratic missteps, were able to wage a delaying action that consumed some time. However, they did not prevail. In the meantime, the abandoned building had become something of an eyesore due in part to the NPS’s strategy of intentional neglect. Within a few months, it will be gone forever.
As with all change, even change that one favors, this change brings forth a small wave of nostalgia. The fact is that even as it commemorates what they did there in 1863, Gettysburg continues to change in ways that render the site different for those who have fond memories of this or that. In the end, I think these changes are for the better, but I can understand why people might not embrace them quite so readily.
I first visited the Cyclorama in 1969 during the week of the moon landing. The building struck me, an 11 year old, as cool and ultramodern. I had been to the World’s Fair in Queens and the Cyclorama told me that the world was moving forward, that America was not stuck in a time warp of sectionalism.
Mom and dad took us out for lunch and we overheard some folks from the South talking about the war in heated tones. My mom seemed disgusted and said that they were “still fighting the Civil War.” To me, the Cyclorama was a statement that America was not going to live in the past, that the passions of the war had been decontaminated from the American mind and had been placed in an antiseptic container where they could be safely viewed and enjoyed as an attraction.
I am glad they have finally begun the demolition process. I was starting to become afraid that it might never happen, even after the court-ordered NPS report of a few months ago recommended it. You didn’t seriously think they were going to reach another conclusion, did you? What a waste of time, though obviously it wasn’t GNMP’s fault.
I visited Gettysburg for the first time in July 2008, a few months after the new VC opened, and so never had the experience of visiting the old one. The delays at least gave me the chance to see the Neutra building. I have visited Gettysburg every years since then, beginning in 2009 with my not-yet-wife. We always liked to have lunch in Ziegler’s Grove and then walk to the cemetery. The old VC was dilapidated, but the area was nice and quiet because obviously visitors no longer come to the area the way they once did. You felt you had a little patch of the battlefield all to yourself. We were dating in 2008 when I went alone and was sending her text messages, traveled there together in the summer of ’09, were newly married in ’10, and have gone the past few summers. Fun times. I’m glad we saw the old structure, but again I’m equally glad it’s going away, especially in time for the sesquicentennial.
And that’s my Old Cyclorama Building nostalgia story.
Your Yankee “uniform” sounds similar to mine when I first went to Gettysburg in the ’60′s. Probably a good thing that you didn’t show up in red bloomers and a fez – I doubt that Adams County was all that open-minded in ’67.
Excellent article Mr. Simpson, and I am glad to hear it is down. I think it is for the best and to return the Battlefield back to as close to 1863 as possible. I viewed the Cyclorama many years back but as a “Southerner”
If I’m not mistaken I saw it in the early 60s when we visited Gettysburg when we were on home leave from Brasil. It was fascinating to see history come alive that way.