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Yamasaki stands above a model of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. Photo by Balthazar Korab.
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WTC Architect’s Offices May Be Demolished
Plans for new convention center may take precedence\
By Sam Chu Lin
Special to AsianWeek
Most Sept. 11 commemorations have come to a close, but that’s not the case in the Troy, Mich., offices where architect Minoru Yamasaki designed the 1,353-foot-tall Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
In the next few months, city officials are preparing for a potentially stormy debate over the creation of a $250 million dollar conference center, theater and hotel complex that could affect the future of Yamasaki’s former offices.
Once a Chicken Farm
Many of Yamasaki’s buildings designed at this Michigan location include the Los Angeles Century Plaza Hotel, San Francisco’s Japan Center, the St. Louis International Airport, the U.S. Consulate in Kobe, Japan and the Rainer Bank Tower in his hometown of Seattle, Wash.
He and his wife Teruko lived a short distance from the office complex he personally designed and landscaped. The Yamasakis and their three children moved to the area when it was a rural community. Troy is now a city with a population of 85,000 people and a major hub of the auto industry.
When Yamasaki died in 1986 at age 73, the building and property were sold to pay off his surviving partners. His son, Kim, who develops affordable housing for a large nonprofit, was once a partner in his father’s firm.
According to Kim, the office was opened in the mid 1960s. “He bought what was formerly a small chicken farm. His offices were only about 300 yards from our house,” his son recounted. “When he built this office in Troy, it really reflected the feelings he had for the people he worked with. It was also a very fine expression of his architectural philosophy.”
Kim continued, “I would like to see him remembered for more of his smaller buildings that he did in the ’50s and early ’60s that were inspired by a humanist perspective ... There are just dozens of smaller buildings … all that had a very special touch, a special insight into how people experience a built environment.”
Both Kim and his Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer brother, Taro, note that when their father was getting started in the architectural profession, he struggled to overcome racial barriers and blazed the trail for others to follow.
They would like to see their father’s former offices used both as an office building and a museum.
“Dad kept scrapbooks of major press clippings,” Taro stated. “There were transcripts of his speeches and many drawings. There are many boxes of that material in the family collection.”
If that information isn’t used at a local museum, the family is considering turning over the artifacts to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
Still Kickin’
Minoru Yamasaki Associates Inc. is still a thriving architectural firm today, but it is now located in nearby Rochester. Henry Guthard was one of the founding members.
“This was an office in which I believe a great deal of seminal architecture of American aesthetic was really developed,” Guthard stated. “It was a very remarkable time — the World Trade Center among them. A great deal of the design work was created in those studios.”
Thomas Ernst of Ford & Earl Associates, the current occupants of Yamasaki’s office building, also worked with Yamasaki in the 1970s. Ford & Earl was responsible for the interiors of the World Trade Center. Ernst is very interested in the future of Yamasaki’s former office complex.
“All buildings have a life cycle,” he noted. “It’s probably going to need a great deal of renovation since it was built in 1967. I think it has a look about it that in some respects is not what people think of as Yamasaki. It’s quite international in style. It’s almost timeless.”
Eminent Destruction
Matt Pryor, Troy’s mayor and a landscape designer by profession, puts Yamasaki in the same class as architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Pryor would like to see at least the front part of Yamasaki’s office preserved, but he admits even that will be a challenging goal.
“If we build a conference center, then we will discuss the significance of that building and whether it’s feasible to save components of it,” he stated.
Robin Beltramini, a City Council member and the former head of the city’s planning commission, says when the concept of a conference center first came up in 1998, the plans called for the demolition of the Yamasaki structure, but there are no definite plans yet.
She added, “The building is now owned by the Troy Employee Retirement Fund, which is independent of the City Council. They are an investment group, which is charged with making money to pay the city pensions. Who they will sell it to is unknown.”
Martin Howrylak is one City Council member who opposes the conference center concept. He believes the Retirement Fund’s purchase of the Yamasaki building was a political move to clear the way for the redevelopment project to get the go-ahead.
“I believe that the intent of some of the people in the city is to knock the building down and then set up some little marker to say, ‘Minoru Yamasaki used to work here!’ ” Howrylak commented.
He added, “The proposed conference center is going to be running up a debt of about a million a year — somebody has to pay for that.”
Michelle Hodges, president of Troy’s Chamber of Commerce and part of the development group championing the conference center complex, argues the pieces are being put into place to ensure Troy taxpayers are not affected.
Regarding the future status of Yamasaki’s building, she said, “We feel that it’s a community treasure, something that we need to respect and value. There has been some discussion that it be part of an entryway to the development. We’re still in the early stages ... so we don’t know how feasible that is.”
Mayor Pryor insists that if the conference center concept is defeated, other private funding will have to be raised to save Yamasaki’s former offices. Troy’s mayor says he recently hosted several Japanese business executives at a dinner who were particularly interested in Yamasaki’s legacy. He suggests that private funding from either Japan or the Asian Pacific American community should be considered to help save the architect’s office building.
Doug Springer, who manages the city’s real estate, estimates that costs could range from $5 to $10 million to purchase Yamasaki’s offices. He also predicts the City Council will probably make its decision on the conference center this winter or early spring, and only then can the fate of the Yamasaki building be dealt with.
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