Bowdoin's Big Makeover
Students aren't the only ones who will enjoy the college's stunning new recital hall and art museum.
After decades of being perceived as the town introvert, Bowdoin College is turning a new and welcoming face to Brunswick with the reopening of two of the school's revamped architectural gems.
The new Studzinski Recital Hall, born out of the former Curtis Pool, and the renovated and expanded Museum of Art, both originally designed by the legendary McKim, Mead, and White architectural firm, have inspired a long list of superlatives, not only for their stunning renovations but also for the message they send about Bowdoin's desire to engage the community that surrounds it.Like most campus buildings, these icons previously turned their backs to the town, a design that fueled the us-versus-them sentiments inherent in town-and-gown controversies. The college's desire to appeal to the broader Brunswick community can be seen in these two buildings as well as in the 2000 renovation of Pickard Theater. All now have street-friendly facades that flirt with passersby.
"Winston Churchill said, 'We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.' That is where Bowdoin now finds itself," says Cristle Collins Judd, Bowdoin's dean of Academic Affairs. "We know the buildings will shape us as a college and as a campus." Because both were redesigned to be more inviting to the outside world, in a broader sense, she acknowledges, they'll shape the community, too.
While the buildings shape the campus and the community, preservation of the facades shaped the renovations of both Curtis Pool and the Museum of Art. "A space with the kind of volume of the Curtis pool is hard to reuse and still respect the exterior of the building," Judd says. "The volume cried out for a concert hall."
Creating Studzinski out of Curtis, however, was no easy feat, since the steel pool actually supported the building's walls. Removing the pool required bringing in the same firm that originally installed it, H.P. Cummings Construction, of Winthrop, to design a tension-bar support system that allowed removal without destabilizing the building.
Swimmers familiar with the old facility will be shocked by the new interior; there's no hint that there ever was a pool here, not even a whiff of lingering chlorine. Not only did the $15 million renovation succeed in creating a place where students can dive into music via nine practice rooms and a rehearsal room, but it also created the acoustically perfect, 280-seat Kanbar Auditorium.
"It's the most wonderful small hall I've ever been in," says Peter Simmons, executive director of the Bowdoin International Music Festival, which utilizes the facility. "What a musician plays is what you hear. It's not diminished or changed by the hall. It's acoustically live and balanced in pretty much any seat. That's a rare thing." He already credits the new facility, which opened in May, with helping grow the Bowdoin festival's audience as well as increasing student applications.
Curtis' exterior barely hints at the changes within, but across the Quad, the Museum of Art's stunning new brass-and-glass entry pavilion is hard to miss. It lures passersby both on campus and strolling along Brunswick's Upper Park Row to come hither and explore and has created excitement about this month's reopening. "We're hoping people are really curious about the pavilion and want to see it and get sucked into the museum," says museum curator Alison Ferris.
For decades, Museum of Art staff had been discussing how to bring the campus icon into the twenty-first century. The $20.8 million project transformed the space by adding climate control, improving storage for its 15,000-object collection, increasing exhibit space by about 2,000 square feet, and providing accessibility. The latter point was the real stickler, given the building's status as one of Maine's most historically important architectural treasures.
"We turned a major problem into a virtue by resolving the intention of opening the museum more to the community in a very elegant and clear way," says architect Jorge Silvetti. "The entrance is clearly shared by the college and the town." He also notes the way the pavilion balances the museum's classical facade with a contemporary identity that complements the range of artwork displayed within it.
Within the pavilion, both stairs and a glass elevator descend to the new, subterranean foyer. To gain the necessary height for galleries, the basement floor was lowered by four feet, a process that required hand digging and excavating through granite rubble walls up to three feet thick with diamond-tipped wire saws.
The college's treasured Assyrian reliefs, previously displayed in the Rotunda, have been reinstalled at eye level in the Upper Park Row-facing addition, where they tease passersby through a wall of windows Silvetti refers to as a "glass curtain."
It's an invitation that's hard to resist. "I walked by the museum in the late afternoon, with the sun on the Assyrian reliefs," Simmons says, and the message was clear: "There's great stuff here, and you should come in and see it."
For more information about visiting Bowdoin's Studzinski Recital Hall and Museum of Art, including a schedule of events and exhibits, and a campus map, visit www.bowdoin.edu
The new Studzinski Recital Hall, born out of the former Curtis Pool, and the renovated and expanded Museum of Art, both originally designed by the legendary McKim, Mead, and White architectural firm, have inspired a long list of superlatives, not only for their stunning renovations but also for the message they send about Bowdoin's desire to engage the community that surrounds it.Like most campus buildings, these icons previously turned their backs to the town, a design that fueled the us-versus-them sentiments inherent in town-and-gown controversies. The college's desire to appeal to the broader Brunswick community can be seen in these two buildings as well as in the 2000 renovation of Pickard Theater. All now have street-friendly facades that flirt with passersby.
"Winston Churchill said, 'We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.' That is where Bowdoin now finds itself," says Cristle Collins Judd, Bowdoin's dean of Academic Affairs. "We know the buildings will shape us as a college and as a campus." Because both were redesigned to be more inviting to the outside world, in a broader sense, she acknowledges, they'll shape the community, too.
While the buildings shape the campus and the community, preservation of the facades shaped the renovations of both Curtis Pool and the Museum of Art. "A space with the kind of volume of the Curtis pool is hard to reuse and still respect the exterior of the building," Judd says. "The volume cried out for a concert hall."
Creating Studzinski out of Curtis, however, was no easy feat, since the steel pool actually supported the building's walls. Removing the pool required bringing in the same firm that originally installed it, H.P. Cummings Construction, of Winthrop, to design a tension-bar support system that allowed removal without destabilizing the building.
Swimmers familiar with the old facility will be shocked by the new interior; there's no hint that there ever was a pool here, not even a whiff of lingering chlorine. Not only did the $15 million renovation succeed in creating a place where students can dive into music via nine practice rooms and a rehearsal room, but it also created the acoustically perfect, 280-seat Kanbar Auditorium.
"It's the most wonderful small hall I've ever been in," says Peter Simmons, executive director of the Bowdoin International Music Festival, which utilizes the facility. "What a musician plays is what you hear. It's not diminished or changed by the hall. It's acoustically live and balanced in pretty much any seat. That's a rare thing." He already credits the new facility, which opened in May, with helping grow the Bowdoin festival's audience as well as increasing student applications.
Curtis' exterior barely hints at the changes within, but across the Quad, the Museum of Art's stunning new brass-and-glass entry pavilion is hard to miss. It lures passersby both on campus and strolling along Brunswick's Upper Park Row to come hither and explore and has created excitement about this month's reopening. "We're hoping people are really curious about the pavilion and want to see it and get sucked into the museum," says museum curator Alison Ferris.
For decades, Museum of Art staff had been discussing how to bring the campus icon into the twenty-first century. The $20.8 million project transformed the space by adding climate control, improving storage for its 15,000-object collection, increasing exhibit space by about 2,000 square feet, and providing accessibility. The latter point was the real stickler, given the building's status as one of Maine's most historically important architectural treasures.
"We turned a major problem into a virtue by resolving the intention of opening the museum more to the community in a very elegant and clear way," says architect Jorge Silvetti. "The entrance is clearly shared by the college and the town." He also notes the way the pavilion balances the museum's classical facade with a contemporary identity that complements the range of artwork displayed within it.
Within the pavilion, both stairs and a glass elevator descend to the new, subterranean foyer. To gain the necessary height for galleries, the basement floor was lowered by four feet, a process that required hand digging and excavating through granite rubble walls up to three feet thick with diamond-tipped wire saws.
The college's treasured Assyrian reliefs, previously displayed in the Rotunda, have been reinstalled at eye level in the Upper Park Row-facing addition, where they tease passersby through a wall of windows Silvetti refers to as a "glass curtain."
It's an invitation that's hard to resist. "I walked by the museum in the late afternoon, with the sun on the Assyrian reliefs," Simmons says, and the message was clear: "There's great stuff here, and you should come in and see it."
For more information about visiting Bowdoin's Studzinski Recital Hall and Museum of Art, including a schedule of events and exhibits, and a campus map, visit www.bowdoin.edu
- By: Hilary Nangle
- Photography by: Michele Stapleton
