A Columbia landmark on the Lake Kittamaqundi waterfront could be demolished to make way for the Town Center?s redevelopment into an urban area. “Whether it stays or doesn?t stay, it?s a beautiful building and I hope it stays, but we just don?t know,” said Douglas Godine, manager of General Growth Properties, which has its headquarters in the building.
Formerly the Rouse Co. headquarters, the building is Columbia?s most notable architectural icon, said Columbia Association Board Member Barbara Russell. Chicago-based General Growth Properties has owned the building since it bought the Rouse Co. in 2004.
Renowned architect Frank Gehry won an American Institute of Architects Honor Award for his design of the building, which opened in 1974. The headquarters housed the Rouse Co.?s offices, including that of Columbia Founder James Rouse, said Barbara Kellner, manager of the Columbia Association?s archives.
“Sometimes its difficult for people to look at buildings younger than themselves and think of them as historic, but we need to look at them in that perspective,” said Mary Catherine Cochran, president of Preservation Howard County.
Preservation Howard County, a nonprofit that advocates for historic and natural resources, supports preserving the General Growth Headquarters building and other Gehry buildings in Columbia.
Photographs of the headquarters illustrate Gehry?s early craftsmanship in two books about his work, and Gehry has noted his Columbia buildings in many interviews, Kellner said.
Gehry?s buildings often look as though they were sculpted ? and the headquarters is no different. Its wooden trellises have a layered, floating appearance.
When Columbia?s Town Center grows into an urban landscape with lofty high-rises, it may become removed from the days when Gehry and Rouse shared an appreciation for welcoming architecture.
General Growth Properties “doesn?t have the same investment in the history of Columbia that the Rouse Co. had,” Russell said.
“It?s up to the people, the residents of Columbia to protect the importance of that history.”
