Gettysburg Cyclorama Center (The Abraham Lincoln “Shrine of the Nation”)

This building signals a shift in perspective regarding the interaction between visitors and America’s national park as ideated by the “Mission 66” program of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The notion was to introduce a new building type whereby an auditorium, exhibits, bookstores, and staff offices would be housed in one centralized structure, called a Visitor Center. 

Here, Neutra along with Alexander and Thaddeus Longstreth created a large round drum, that from one perspective, appears to float above its stone piers that radiantly extended out of the surrounding landscape. From another vantage, the volume is attached to a linear glass ‘spine’ with vertical metal louvers that hold the administrative offices of the Park Service.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 390.