COLUMBUS, INDIANA, UNITED STATES

In many respects, Columbus, Indiana, is a typical small town of the American Midwest
with a population of only 32,000 and a single company dominating its economic and
civic life. Its main street, laid out in 1821, retains much of its 19th-century character, as
does its most visible public building, the Victorian Bartholomew County Courthouse
(1874) on the town square. However, Columbus also possesses one of the densest
concentrations of modern architecture in the United States, with more than 50 buildings
designed by internationally known firms.
Columbus’ involvement with modern architecture is due largely to the patronage of
J.Irwin Miller, the (now retired) chairman of Cummins Engine Company. Miller was
exposed to modernism as an undergraduate at Yale University, where he developed an
enthusiast’s interest in architecture and a belief in its potential to express the spirit of a
community. In 1937, when his uncle and aunt donated land in downtown Columbus for
their congregation’s new church, Miller persuaded his relatives to give the commission to
Eliel Saarinen, whose Cranbrook School of Art had deeply impressed him. Saarinen’s
First Christian Church (1942) is a restrained, boxlike structure of buff brick with a
gridded limestone facade and a detached, shaftlike campanile. Furnishings for the church
were designed by Saarinen’s son Eero (Miller’s classmate at Yale) and Charles Eames.
The church’s departure from its predecessor’s Gothic Revival style caused local
controversy on its completion, but eventually Columbus became receptive to modern
architecture.
Miller continued to press the cause of modern architecture in the following decades,
commissioning Eero Saarinen to design a series of buildings, including the North
Christian Church and his own house. The church is a simple geometric composition of
concrete and slate. Its hexagonal form, symbolizing unity, is articulated in steel by
prominent roof ribs that rise to form a spire marking the centralized sanctuary within. The
Miller house, one of Saarinen’s few residential commissions, features a transformable
open plan, a conversation pit, and plastic “scoop” dining chairs designed for the house.
Saarinen also designed a new branch and central office for Miller’s family’s bank. The
Irwin Union Bank and Trust (1954) was the first example of Miesian modernism in
Columbus. Although its steel frame and transparent glass facade defied small-town
expectations for a bank, its open plan and cageless teller stations were welcomed by
patrons for their friendliness and informality. Subsequent Irwin Union branches and
office additions were designed by Harry Weese (1958) and Roche Dinkeloo (1973).
Under Miller’s aegis these firms also designed buildings for the Cummins Engine
Company, including factories, offices, and research facilities. Roche Dinkeloo’s
Components Plant (1973) maximized manufacturing flexibility and productivity while
enhancing the work environment for the plant’s 2,000 employees. Designing a 13-acre
glass-and-steel shed set in a parklike campus, the architects utilized innovative air and
noise pollution control systems and provided extensive views to the exterior. To avoid
marring these views, the architects accommodated automobiles on the plant’s roof. When
the design was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, it was hailed as a
prototype for the factory of the future. Roche Dinkeloo’s corporate office complex (1984)
for Cummins was as significant for its location as for its design. Determined to make
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downtown Columbus continually relevant to the life of the city, Miller chose to locate
Cummins World Headquarters on three square blocks in the central business district
rather than on the urban periphery. A long arc of a building with a sawtooth east facade
embracing a public park, it is flanked by a covered public walkway that connects with
nearby structures (post office, bank, and shopping mall) used by employees. The Roche
Dinkeloo design also included the renovation of a brick building from 1881 that was part
of the original garage and machine shop where the Cummins diesel engine was born.
The renovation of this building reflected architecture’s burgeoning interest in adaptive
reuse as well as Miller’s own awareness of his company’s local historical significance.
As early as the 1960s, Miller hired Alexander Girard to renovate his family’s 1881 Irwin
Bank building to house his private offices. Although the interior was thoroughly
modernized, the building’s castiron-and-brick facade was restored to approximately its
original appearance. This renovation was part of a master revitalization plan that Girard
prepared for the Columbus Redevelopment Commission. Focusing on a ten-block area of
downtown Columbus that had declined in the 1950s because of suburban retail
competition, Girard preserved the Victorian character of the district while adapting it for
contemporary use, introducing coherent signage and color coordination across the
corridor’s storefronts. This revitalization effort was given added impetus by the
construction of the Courthouse Center and Commons (1973), a Miller-financed shopping
and civic complex. Occupying a superblock site along Washington Street, the complex
was designed by Cesar Pelli to minimize its obtrusive scale by respecting the cornice
lines of nearby buildings. Its brown mirrored glass sheathing gives way on the
Washington Street facade to clear glass, better connecting the enclosed commons with
the life of the street. Inside is a Jean Tinguely sculpture fabricated of metal scraps
collected from the Columbus area. This work is the focal point of the complex, serving as
a popular public gathering place, thus satisfying Miller’s desire that the Commons add
vitality to downtown and become a contemporary equivalent to the town’s original public
plaza, namely, the courthouse square immediately to the south.
Miller’s direct patronage brought a substantial amount of modern
architecture to Columbus, but of even greater impact was the architectural
program that he established through the Cummins Engine Foundation in
1954. Alarmed that post-World War II business and population expansion
was negatively affecting Columbus’ built environment and its quality of
life, Miller proposed to improve both. His foundation would pay the
architect’s fees for any civic building in Columbus, provided that the
designer be chosen from a list of six approved architects. That list,
supplied by the foundation but compiled by an anonymous panel of
national experts, is continually revised to include the names of architects
appropriate for a specific project. There are no other restrictions, and the
foundation distances itself from the selection and design process, declining
to meet the chosen architect until his or her fee is paid. The Columbus School Board was the first local body
to accept the foundation’s offer, selecting Harry Weese to design the Lillian Schmitt
Elementary School (1957). Subsequent schools were designed by Norman Fletcher and
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The Architects Collaborative (1962), Edward Larrabee Barnes (1965), Gunnar Birkerts
(1967), John Johansen (1969), Eliot Noyes (1969), Mitchell-Giurgola (1972), Hardy,
Holman, Pfieffer (1972), Caudill Rowlett Scott (1973), and Richard Meier (1982).
Stylistically diverse—including concrete bunkers, megastructures, programmatic clusters,
high-tech imagery, and neoindustrial forms—these buildings demonstrate a broad range
of postwar modernism.
Other public buildings financed by the Cummins architectural program include
Venturi and Rauch’s Fire Station No. 4 (1967), which responds to the surrounding
commercial vernacular through consciously banal design, signage, and materials; Roche
Dinkeloo’s Columbus Post Office (1972), the nation’s first designed by privately paid
architects and notable for its use of salt-glazed tiles (typical of midwestern grain silos)
and Cor-ten steel; Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s City Hall (1981), with a concave glass
facade set back from elongated brick cantilevers framing the entrance; and Don Hisaka’s
Law Enforcement Building (1991), designed in a neo-Victorian manner with brickwork
and stone trim matching that of the adjacent courthouse. Since the architecture program’s
inception, the Cummins Engine Foundation has spent nearly $15 million in design fees
for more than 30 buildings. Although critics have complained that the program produces
expensive buildings and favors high-style designers over local architects, it is generally
regarded as a success. The program has been cited as a model of innovative public/
private partnership, garnering praise from the National Building Museum, the American
Institute of Architects, and the Pritzker Prize.
The impact of the Cummins architectural program has extended beyond the individual
buildings that it has subsidized. It has contributed to an unprecedented level of
architectural awareness and design excellence throughout Columbus, evident in the
award-winning buildings erected without foundation support. These include I.M.Pei’s
Cleo Rogers Memorial Library (1969), which engages Saarinen’s First Christian Church
across a new public plaza; Gunnar Birkerts’ St. Peter’s Lutheran Church (1988), whose
congregation selected Birkerts because they admired his Cummins-financed design for a
nearby school; Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s plant for The Republ ic newspaper (1971), with its
printing equipment dramatically revealed behind a transparent facade; and Caudill
Rowlett Scott’s switching center for Indiana Bell Telephone (1978), with its colorful
street-level shafts. The latter two are fine examples of light indus-trial buildings
sensitively designed as neighborhood enhancements.
Although many of Columbus’ modern buildings are architectural landmarks, none
exist as isolated monuments. Rather, housing the everyday institutions of the town, these
buildings are an integral part of daily life. Taken together, they present a cohesive portrait
of postwar architecture and planning, documenting changes in modernism and
Postmodernism, urban renewal and historic preservation, and public policy and civic
awareness and demonstrating the social benefits of good design.