Friday, August 04, 2000
Freedom Center to be striking
Details released for riverfront focal point
By Kristina Goetz
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Three connecting five-story buildings will be organized around a central arrival plaza.
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On the eve of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's visit to Cincinnati to be honored by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, officials Thursday released rich detail about center exhibits and design.
The $90 million museum — part of a massive, $2 billion riverfront face lift downtown — is scheduled to open in 2003 on the riverfront between Walnut and Vine streets.
By 2006, along with the Freedom Center, the city's front porch is to include two new sports stadiums, an improved highway, a 71-acre park, shops, restaurants and housing.
While Freedom Center organizers worked this week to get ready for Saturday's presentation of the second annual International Freedom Conductor Award, architects were in town to review the latest renderings of the planned Freedom Center.
“Soon the public will get their first glimpse of the architecture,” said John Fleming, director of the Freedom Center. “We plan to share the final model with the whole nation in a couple of months.”
The Freedom Center has raised $50 million of the estimated $90 million museum cost. A recent Congressional bill may add $16 million more.
Planned exhibits will portray the legends of the Underground Railroad and include a theater in which visitors may participate in dialogues after their tour.
nbsp; Technology will play a big role in the museum, connecting people worldwide to research and stories about the Under ground Railroad and the issues of race and freedom. Included in museum archives will be stored and indexed information people have collected about their own families and communities.
Walls will undulate to show the influence of the curves of the Ohio River in the design.
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The Freedom Center is intended as a tribute to the Underground Railroad — a network of African-Americans, abolitionists and their allies that helped slaves escape from the South to freedom in the North before the Civil War.
This network secretly supplied the passage for fleeing men and women at a time when the country was divided over the moral and fiscal consequences of slavery.
Architects Thursday offered a sneak peek of their plans for the 160,000- square-foot facility, which will include three five-story buildings connected by bridges. They will be organized around a central arrival plaza and offer a framed panoramic view of Northern Kentucky and the Roebling Suspension Bridge.
The project is being jointly designed by Blackburn Architects of Indianapolis and BOORA Architects of Portland, Ore.
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Tutu receives Conductor Award
Archbishop Desmond Tutu will receive the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center's “Freedom Conductor” award Saturday night at a sold-out Northern Kentucky Convention Center ceremony.
Archbishop Tutu, who helped lead the movement against South Africa's racial segregation policy known as apartheid, will appear for about 10 minutes at a reception, and then be on hand for the award presentation later in the evening. The event is expected to draw about 1,200 people and has been sold out for months.
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“The story of the National Underground Railroad evokes for most Americans a period of our history that was fraught with all kinds of agonizing struggles or deprecating shame,” said Alpha Blackburn, president of Blackburn Architects. “Both are emotionally burdensome.
“It (the center) will dare to express the truthful recounting of that history but go a step further to help bring people toward an understanding.”
Ms. Blackburn said the struc ture itself will reflect the dehumanization, fierce determination and, finally, the deliverance of slaves. The walls of the building will be stone and ragged to suggest a rigorous struggle.
“The walls undulate, go in and out,” Ms. Blackburn said. “That suggests two things: the actual ebb and flow of the river, which is very much a part of the story, and the ebb and flow of life itself, the continuing struggle for freedom worldwide.”
Etched into the topography that surrounds the museum will be the same features. The covering on outer walls is intended to look like natural flagstones — a reminder of the slave walls seen through much of the countryside in rural Kentucky.
Organizers want to make the center itself like a stop on the Underground Railroad. When slaves escaped via the Underground Railroad, Cincinnati was not the end of the journey. Neither do organizers want the freedom center to be.
“We're a place where you can get the information and the inspiration to continue the journey,” said Ernest Britton, spokesman for the Freedom Center.
Organizers hope people will become involved in groups that fight poverty and discrimination.
Cincinnati, because of its location on the Ohio River and its proximity to slave-holding states, was often the line that separated South from North. Scholars estimate that 100,000 slaves made the secret journey north, with as many as 60,000 passing through Ohio.
“It was right on the frontier, right on the river of what slaves saw as the River Jordan, the river you had to cross into freedom,” Mr. Fleming said. “More slaves crossed the Ohio River than any other area of the country.”
While the design of the museum is being completed, exhibits planning is also under way.
One highlight is a theater that may involve live actors portraying the story of a key figure during this time period. Visitors will participate, Mr. Britton said.
“You'll certainly know the horrors of slavery, but you'll leave with a positive attitude that at one time in America blacks and whites worked together for freedom and that can happen again,” Mr. Britton said.
One of the last experiences a visitor will have is to listen and participate in a public dialogue about modern day issues of freedom in countries like Bosnia or South Africa.
“The Freedom Center is a place you come, you rest, you recoup and then go out into the world and become modern day conductors,” Mr. Fleming said. “In terms of design we're saying this is a world-class building.
“We think this is going to be a landmark for Cincinnati.”
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