The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA, a unique structure that both symbolizes and explains the nation’s continuing commitment to individual freedoms, opened on July 4 facing Independence Hall from the north end of the Independence National Historical Park Mall.
The $137.5-million center, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, New York, NY, with Henry N. Cobb, the partner in charge of the design, meets an exacting challenge. It had to complement — but not overshadow — the national shrines on the mall, and also be a spacious, beautiful structure engaging thousands of people a day in discovering more about the constitution and its continuing challenge.
The Constitution Center is a story of individual initiative and creativity producing a building, which leading experts say is destined to take its place among the nation’s foremost public monuments.
Compelling Idea
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Constitutional Heritage Act allowing for the formation of a non-partisan, non-profit organization in Philadelphia “to increase awareness and understanding” of the Constitution. The organization, the National Constitution Center, has led the fundraising and construction effort, and operates the center itself.
Approximately $86 million in combined state and federal funds were designated for the building. The Delaware River Port Authority pledged $10.5 million and Philadelphia allotted $5 million. Much of the rest came from individuals, including Walter and Lenore Annenberg ($10 million), Richard and Helen DeVos ($10 million) and Sidney Kimmel ($5 million), plus at least 5,000 people who gave $25 and up.
A typical donor was Gordon Yasinow, who became a “charter member” in memory of his mother. “All I can say is that all is right with the Constitution Center,” he told Construction Equipment Guide (CEG). “I like it because it is something that is long overdue. It really should have been in Philly much earlier because Philly basically was the cradle of liberty — both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”
Philadelphia’s Mayor Ed Rendell, who served as chairman of the center in the second half of the 1990s, was a major force in turning the vision into the real thing. He hired Joseph M. Torsella as president and chief executive officer, who has run a successful $185-million fundraising program that is close to reaching its goal of a $40-million endowment.
Pei Cobb Freed, which had designed several world-famous structures, including the East Wing of the National Gallery and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., was selected as the architect in late 1998. Turner Construction Co., New York, NY, was selected as general contractor in April 2001.
An estimated 10,000 visitors flocked to the center on opening day. The center expects at least one million visitors from throughout the country each year.
Challenged Architects
The mission statement of the National Constitution Center declares that its building “will be the first-ever structure built to honor and explain the Constitution.”
Explaining, as well as celebrating, was a novel challenge for lead designer Henry Cobb. Explanation is a task traditionally left to other arts within the building, rather than being a function of the building itself.
In this case, however, both the exterior forms and interior spaces convey a sense of the Constitution’s solid foundation and active engagement with the life of citizens and the nation. This engagement, rather than enshrining the Constitution as an object of worship, was the “conceptual wellspring” of Cobb’s design, and resulted in what could be called a poetic statement in stone and glass.
Uses Banded Limestone
The 160,000-sq.-ft. Center forms the northern anchor to the Independence Mall, but it’s no static structure. The principal building components, both inside and outside, are large pieces of buff-colored Indiana limestone broken up by more narrow horizontal bands of light gray Chelmsford granite. This banded stone facade is a marked departure from the Philadelphia brick used in the park’s other structures.
The limestone pieces are 3 ft. high. Their length varies from 3 ft. 8 in. for rectangular walls to 5 ft. 2 in. for diagonal walls. The granite bands, 8 in. high, give the structure more scale and emphasize its horizontal nature, so that it fits into the Mall.
“The banded stone is a basic design module that breaks up the mass and provides continuity between the exterior and interior,” said Craig Dumas, project architect, who directed the design under Harry Cobb, worked with the Constitution Center, and followed through the construction. CEG interviewed Dumas by telephone two days before the new building opened.
Stone, Glass and Color
A central feature of the Center’s exterior is a monumental porch, 40 ft. high and 140 ft. high, which complements the rectangular Independence Hall on the other end of the Mall, without overshadowing it. The porch is roughly the same height and width as the central section of the Hall.
To the left of the porch — beautiful in its simplicity — is a 40-ft. high limestone and granite wall, bare except for the large-scrolled words of the Preamble, inlaid in painted stainless steel: “We the People” followed by, in smaller scroll, “of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The scroll replicates the graceful script of the original Preamble.
The porch shelters a glass wall through which one can enter a grand hall designed to be “vividly transparent.” A banded limestone wall on the left extends up to the ceiling. The wall brings close the beauty of the limestone and granite motif. Two inscriptions, in large block letters, run across it:
“One country, one Constitution, one destiny” — Daniel Webster, 1837
“The people themselves must be the ultimate makers of their own Constitution” — Theodore Roosevelt 1912
The Grand Hall is an open space looking out to the sky and the city (Franklin Square) through another glass wall at the opposite, northwest, side of the center. The light, and buff stone, accentuate the color from the large United States flag hanging from the ceiling and the 56 flags of the states, plus the District of Columbia and territories, hanging from a second level overlook around the sides of the hall. Angled steps on the right lead to this second level.
“The Grand Hall atrium is intended to be like an exterior space, an extension of the exterior into the building,” Dumas said. “That transparency — the openness and permanence — was important to the design.”
The ceiling of the Grand Hall includes triangular skylights with inverted pyramids, made of fabric, below them.
“You’re not getting direct sunlight; the pyramids act like glowing lanterns, which put light on to the coffered ceiling in a subdued, kind of skylit, space,” Dumas explained.
Cobb also used powerful diagonals, including two fine-razor narrow-angle corner structures, to convey a sense of dynamic engagement. (A distinctive feature of Pei Cobb Freed designs, they resemble the narrow-angle corner of the National Gallery’s East Wing.)
All this makes the Constitution Center more than a static terminus to the Park’s north-south axis. Rather, it is an asymmetrical design whose “dynamic spatial gesture,” looking out, is a visual symbol explaining the Constitution’s dynamic purpose in the society outside the structure.
Interactive Experience
Most people enter the exhibit area from the ground level at the north side of the Grand Hall. Here a 17-minute “Freedom Rising” multimedia presentation, with a live narrator, in the 350-seat circular Kimmel Theater tells the story of the Constitution and constitutional issues.
Visitors leave the theater at the second floor level and enter the actual exhibit hall, called “The American Experience,” within a large doughnut, circular-drum, space that wraps around the theater on the upper level.
The experience, designed by Ralph Appelbaum & Associates, who also designed the Holocaust Museum exhibits, brings the Constitution to life through more than 100 interactive and multimedia exhibits, with computer screens, mini-documentary films, and both video and audio segments. It also includes story panels, photographs and such artifacts as President Franklin Roosevelt’s leg braces, a signed copy of the sheet music for Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” and lock picks used in the Watergate break-in.
In the interactive portions, visitors can vote for their all-time favorite president, and even sit in a replica of a Supreme Court bench, don the robes of a judge, and, using touch-screen computers, choose cases, hear arguments, and register your decision.
The National American Tree, one of the interactive exhibits, allows visitors to touch a name like Raymond Downey and see the story behind the name. Downey, chief of special operations for the New York Fire Department, died on Sept. 11, 2001.
The outer rim of the circular hall contains 10 walk-in environments that re-create period settings during the evolution of the Constitution. The corridor is lined with 450 ft. of etched glass panels displaying the articles of the Constitution, and its amendments. Visitors emerge from this experience into “Signers’ Hall,” where life-sized bronze statues of the 42 delegates to the 1787 constitutional convention stand in various poses.
The 6-ft. 3-in. George Washington stands at the table where they are to sign the document.
Behind Washington, on the wall, is the final phrase of the Preamble: “Do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.” Also on the wall are the words: “The people made the Constitution and they can unmake it. It is the creature of their will and lives only by their consent.” — Chief Justice John Marshall, 1821.
Just outside Signers’ Hall, within a glass case, is one of the first public printings of the Constitution. One of only 20 in existence, it was printed as part of a newspaper, The Pennsylvania Packet, on Sept. 19, 1787. Visitors can add their signatures to the Constitution, or sign a book abstaining. (Three of the 42 delegates dissented.)
From Signers Hall, visitors can exit toward the glass south wall overlooking the always-inspiring Independence Hall, where it all began. With this backdrop, visitors can walk over to an outdoor terrace, also on the second level, and enjoy refreshments while contemplating.
Further information on the Constitution Center, including a virtual tour, is available on http://constitutioncenter.org.
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