[VAcourier] Telling the "whole story" by the NPS at Gettysburg-todays Washington Post

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At Last, a Gettysburg Redress
With Its New (but Old-Fashioned) Visitor Center and A Plan to Restore
Sightlines, the Battlefield Honors Its Past


By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 14, 2008; C01




GETTYSBURG, Pa. If you stand on the low rise known as Cemetery Ridge, above
the killing fields of Gettysburg, you command one of the most important
"what if" promontories of American history. It was here, on July 3, 1863,
that the course of the famous Civil War battle might have turned. It was
here that the Confederacy -- or the rebellion -- reached what became known
as its "high-water mark." It was here that the entire direction of the war
might have changed, if Pickett's Charge had decisively broken the Union
line, if the election of 1864 had consequently gone against Lincoln, if the
North, humiliated by a Confederate victory on Union soil, had sued for
peace.

Generations of military men, amateur historians, little boys with dreams of
glory and tourists of all stripes have stood on this site and wondered: What
if? But a new set of questions and a new set of priorities have come to
Gettysburg
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Gettysburg?tid=informline>
. The high-water mark, with its sweeping view of the mountains, its stone
forest of memorial markers, its little copse of old trees that may, perhaps,
be descendants of the original trees that once served as a focal point for
the Confederate attack on Union lines, is again on the front lines of
history.

With the opening today of a new, $103 million visitor center at Gettysburg
National Military Park, Cemetery Ridge is undergoing the most radical change
to its look and feel in a generation. The new visitor center, hidden in a
hollow behind the ridge, has made both the old visitor center and the
Cyclorama Building -- designed by the renowned architect Richard Neutra in
the 1960s -- obsolete. And so, in an effort to return the battlefield to its
original state, the National Park Service
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/National+Park+Service?tid=i
nformline>  is about to tear down both structures, which have for decades
sat squarely in the middle of the Union lines.

These changes are part of a rehabilitation project that has produced
dramatic changes on the battlefield. In the early 1990s, power lines that
ran along the Emmitsburg Road -- one of several historic roads that converge
at Gettysburg -- were buried underground. In 2000, a hulking observation
tower -- a tourist trap that offered paying visitors the chance to survey
the battlefield from on high -- was demolished. And today, the Park Service
continues to remove trees and build fences, in an effort to re-create the
original sightlines of the 1863 battle.

It's not just physical changes. Exhibits and films at the new museum are
focused on the context of the war, the issue of slavery, the economic
challenges faced by North and South -- a shift in emphasis that is happening
throughout the National Park Service's Civil War sites. From the very
opening of the new, 22-minute introductory movie, viewers are reminded that
slavery was not just a cherished Southern tradition but also essential to
the bottom line of Northern textile mill owners. The historical galleries
next to the theaters are very much in line with the contemporary trend
toward media-dense exhibits, filled with shorter films in mini-theaters, all
carefully structured to draw the viewer through "a narrative" presentation
of the war, its causes and its aftermath.

And driving all this change is a closely watched arrangement between the
Park Service and the nonprofit, independent Gettysburg Foundation, which may
change the way the nation's premier cultural sites are funded, tended and
preserved. Without this agreement, under which the foundation raises funds
for the park, and owns and operates the visitor center, it's unlikely that
most of the $125 million in improvements could have been made. It is a
relationship that gives the park economic flexibility, gives it greater
control over its finances and allows it to make innovations that might not
seem particularly innovative anywhere except within the National Park
Service. For instance, it will now be possible to buy tickets to the theater
and battlefield tours online.

"Which, for us, is like jumping straight from the 19th century to the 21st
century," says John A. Latschar, superintendent of Gettysburg National
Military Park.

The most notable change, for most tourists, will be the visitor center,
which is designed to look like a typical farm structure one might find
anywhere in the hills of Pennsylvania
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pennsylvania?tid=informline
> . The old cyclorama is being refurbished and reinstalled in what looks
like a low, squat silo, painted barn red. Wooden beams salvaged from Civil
War era barns have been used, both as decoration and to support porch
overhangs. Much of the building is clad in central Pennsylvania granite,
which has the curious feature of seeming to be both blue and gray at the
same time.

It is everything the Richard Neutra building is not. That structure, a
concrete, modernist facility that housed the cyclorama in a round,
bunker-like tube, is an overstated, chilly yet compelling presence. The new
center is backward-looking, faux-historical and architecturally bland. And
there's little doubt that the new building is the right one for Gettysburg.

"In the mid-1960s, the National Park Service was pursuing what one would
think was an enlightened policy of trying to get the best architects in the
world to design visitor centers," says Jerry Rogers, who served as associate
director for cultural resources at the Park Service in the 1980s and early
1990s. The Neutra building "was a physical intrusion, and an architectural
masterpiece. And that created controversy from Day One."

The Park Service, says Rogers, also sited the building in the middle of the
historic lines of battle as part of a policy to get visitors into the middle
of the action. Now the policy is to make the buildings blend in, and move
them to the sidelines, a policy Rogers supports.

But the desire to be in the thick of the things still controls many of the
decisions being made at Gettysburg. The old cyclorama, a 377-foot round
painting of the battle created by Paul Philippoteaux in 1884, was the
"immersive" cultural experience of its day. It has taken on such iconic
status that it is being restored to its original format, which requires
meticulous repair and repainting, and the re-creation of three-dimensional
diorama pieces (installed along the edges of the painting to create an
optical illusion) that have been missing for at least 40 years. (It will be
unveiled at the center's "grand opening" in September.)

It is an odd way to spend $15 million -- the artistic equivalent of
preserving and rebuilding an old McDonald's
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/McDonald's+Corporation?tid=
informline>  or saving a commercial sign simply because it's become a
familiar part of the landscape. But after almost 100 years of life at
Gettysburg, there was no question that the cyclorama would be retained.

That is typical of the often irrational choices that must inevitably be made
when the goal is to restore a place to its look at a given point in history.
According to the Park Service, in 1863 there were 898 acres of wooded land
on the battlefield; today trees cover about 1,974 acres. Removing them is
history's gain, but the environment's loss -- though, to be fair, the Park
Service is also re-creating wetlands and the new visitor center is heated
and cooled with geothermal wells.

And while site lines are re-created by removing forest and rebuilding old
lanes, roads and fences, the battlefield is covered with 1,328 monuments,
which feels like one for every regiment that trod the bloody fields. Some of
them, especially the Pennsylvania memorial, are so large they amount to
substantial stone structures. None were there when the battle was fought, of
course, but there are no plans to remove them.

Curiously, the effort to rehabilitate the battlefield as authentic,
19th-century farmland comes when the events of the battle are increasingly
being subsumed into a different kind of historical narrative. The daily
blow-by-blow is still there. But it is surrounded by a broader discussion of
the early U.S. history, slavery, westward expansion and the fraught
presidential election of 1860. Only about a third of the museum space is
devoted to the three-day battle, in which almost 8,000 men died and tens of
thousands were wounded or captured.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Jesse+Jackson+Jr.?tid=infor
mline>  (D-Ill.), who hasn't yet seen the new visitor center, thinks the
Park Service is making progress in its effort to tell a broader story. He
toured Civil War sites in 1996 and said he found that many of them "wouldn't
even tell you why they were fighting." Jackson noticed that sites that were
in areas without much political or racial diversity tended to focus more
minutely on battle tactics and elide the whole issue of the war's causes. So
he inserted language to accompany a 2000 Interior Department
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+Department+of+the+Inte
rior?tid=informline>  funding bill that required Park Service managers to
emphasize "the unique role that the institution of slavery played in causing
the Civil War and its role, if any, at individual battle sites."

Visitors who sit through the new film will hear a collage of voices on the
subject of the war's causes, including passages from Frederick Douglass
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Frederick+Douglass?tid=info
rmline> 's 1852 speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?," which
bubbled up to new prominence during the recent controversy over remarks made
by Sen. Barack Obama
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Barack+Obama?tid=informline
> 's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Jeremiah+Wright?tid=informl
ine> .

Even more powerful is the film's reminder that the 1913 Gettysburg reunion,
which documentarian Ken Burns
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Ken+Burns?tid=informline>
celebrated in conventional style as a moment of healing between North and
South, was in fact a rapprochement only for white people, even as Jim Crow
laws were becoming pervasive throughout the South. And that President
Woodrow Wilson
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Woodrow+Wilson?tid=informli
ne> , who spoke at the reunion ceremony of new brotherhood between North and
South, returned to the White House
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+White+House?tid=informl
ine>  to sign orders segregating the federal workforce.

This hasn't come without controversy. Rogers points out that Gettysburg was
originally a military park, that it was for decades a place for military
officers to study the particulars of a particular battle.

"It is kind of understandable that the original emphasis on Civil War
battlefields had to do with strategy and tactics and battlefield action," he
says.

And then there was opposition from Southern groups who felt not only that
the traditional emphasis on the battle and heroes of the battle should be
retained, but that focusing on slavery as a cause of the war diminished the
importance of states' rights as an issue.

There is also deep discomfort among many Park Service people about the
degree to which private groups are funding public initiatives. Robert
Arnberger, who sits on the executive council of the Coalition of National
Park Service Retirees
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Coalition+of+National+Park+
Service+Retirees?tid=informline> , worries that the increased reliance on
private money is weaning Americans from the responsibility to protect places
like Gettysburg with tax dollars.

"On the surface that appears to be a really neat idea," Arnberger says of
the new fad for public-private partnerships. "The problem is that the
projects that get done are only the projects that you have a partner for.
And it skews the entire prioritization of what's important in the Park
Service."

In practical terms, that means that glamour projects, such as a new visitor
center at a beloved battlefield, get funded, while fixing sewage lines or
repairing roads moves to the bottom of the list.

Latschar, whom many credit for having pursued the rehabilitation of
Gettysburg with impressive determination, is happy just to be free of the
old visitor center.

"We were holding the old place together with duct tape and chewing gum," he
says. Given that the Gettysburg Foundation will operate and maintain the new
visitor center, being rid of the old one, which the Park Service maintained,
will save money.

These funding issues will be mostly lost on visitors to the new facility.
The success of the building isn't architectural, and it isn't even
particularly about the new, more contextual history it presents. What makes
it work is its basic seriousness, its fustiness, its old-fashioned look and
feel. It is understated in a classic National Park Service way. It feels
like a seamless part of the old Park Service brand. The paradox is that it
took some major financial outsourcing to build a basic, high-quality Park
Service visitor center. The danger of that trend isn't lost on Park Service
old-timers.

"I think it is a serious mistake when the United States is too cheap to take
care of its own heritage and basically becomes dependent on private
donations," says Rogers, who isn't opposed to the particular partnership at
Gettysburg. "A proud nation shouldn't do that."

Gettysburg National Military Park is open daily, 6 a.m.-10 p.m. April 1-Oct.
31, and 6 a.m.-7 p.m. Nov. 1-March 31. The park's visitor center is open
daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., till 6 p.m. in summer. Admission is free. For
information, call 717-334-1124, Ext. 431, or visit http://www.nps.gov/gett.

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