Monday, June 16, 2008

Group raises $93K to save part of Barnum, needs your help

Our friends, architects Ron Rea and Chris Longe, are working with a group of residents intent on saving a portion of Barnum School. Over the past three weeks, the group has proposed a design and miraculously raised nearly $100,000, a significant portion of which was pledged by neighborhood residents who formerly supported complete demolition of the school. Nonetheless, the City Commission has set the fundraising bar so high, and set such a short deadline for the group (it insists that $500,000 be raised by June 23), that success demands your help. If you can afford to give, please do so. If you agree that the plan is worth a shot, and deserves more time, make your opinion known. Call or email the City Commission through City Manager Tom Markus. He’s at 248-644-1800 x270 or .

Click here to download the group's color flier.

Longe writes:

Those of us who firmly believe that the demolition of the Barnum School and the implementation of the approved Barnum Park design is an enormous mistake on many levels find it hard to understand how the Birmingham City Commission could allow this catastrophe to occur.

The original Barnum School, as it stands, frames and completes both Frank and Purdy. It is now; as it has been since 1912, part of the neighborhood fabric. It is historic in the sense that it is part of the collective memory of those who live in Birmingham.

To completely remove the building removes a large part of what provided the context for the streets and the homes of the surrounding neighborhood since Barnum predates most of those homes. To entirely demolish the original 1912 school building is exactly the wrong thing to do.

What is most offensive about this endeavor is that the park plan that is offered in its place is far less than what we are about to give up, and completely eliminates what should be a clear and coherent vision for the park.

As an alternative, Ron Rea’s plan to maintain the ‘skeletal frame’ of the 1912 Barnum School and recycle it as a Pavilion offers a practical and sculptural solution to a park that is otherwise flat, suburban, lacking focus, and could be built anywhere.

The Barnum Pavilion maintains what is historic - the outline of the original school formed by decorative brick walls, and reuses the heavy timbers that now support the floors. This plan allows the form - the ‘ghost’ of Barnum School - to continue to weight, frame and contribute context to the street and neighborhood. It keeps part of our history for Birmingham - now and for future generations.

Saving the exterior of the 1912 Barnum School as the Barnum Pavilion offers purpose for the park where none will exist should the Commission move forward to demolish Barnum School and execute the approved park plan. Barnum Pavilion would become a design element to build on in the future and continue to create a ‘sense of place,’ as Barnum School has for nearly 100 years.

No-one is challenging the creation of a community park as the best use for the Barnum property - that threshold has been long passed. The design of this park is what has set many of those who care in motion. Our efforts are directed at maintaining an historic asset that has contributed to this community for a century, while giving meaning to what would otherwise be another suburban park.

This effort to create the Barnum Pavilion has generated $93,000 in pledges in less than three weeks, and is only beginning. The City Commission has unfairly required that $500,000 must be raised by the June 23rd Commission meeting or the Barnum School will be lost.

We all lose if demolition is allowed to commence. We all win if Barnum is saved, recycled and reused as a pavilion that will be enjoyed by all who will visit Barnum Park. If you agree that our history is worth saving, help us to create the Barnum Pavilion. Let the City Commission know that the effort to create Barnum Pavilion deserves more time to raise the funds needed to save an irreplaceable part of our history.