Saving Saarinen
Two Opposing Plans for New Jersey's Bell Labs
By Eric Wills | Online Only | Mar. 20, 2009
Photos by Ralph Rosenberg
To design a glass-and-steel laboratory five stories high in the middle of 472 acres of grassy plain and wetlands—and somehow make the structure blend in with the landscape—is no simple feat. But Eero Saarinen managed this remarkable sleight of hand with his 1962 design of Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, N.J., once dubbed "the biggest mirror ever." The building's massive glass-paneled walls reflect the nearby ponds and trees, making the structure seem smaller than it really is. Only upon stepping inside and glancing up at the catwalks that line the upper floors, at the soaring atrium, does one grasp the scope of a building a quarter-mile long that once housed nearly 6,000 scientists.
Now, Bell Labs may pull the ultimate vanishing act: It may disappear forever. The former home of Nobel Prize-winning scientists whose research made possible the cell phone, the computer—and a score of other indispensable products in the average household—stands vacant, a holdover from an era when large private facilities stood at the forefront of scientific research in this country. (Bell, one of the last bastions of basic research in the corporate world, closed its physics lab last year.)
Alcatel/Lucent, the most recent owner, left the site two years ago and last fall contracted to sell it to Somerset Development. Based in nearby Lakewood, N.J., Somerset has proposed an ambitious plan to transform the site into a kind of New Urbanist town square—a plan that calls for new development but has heartened many Bell Labs devotees because it saves the building.
This month, however, Holmdel's township committee commissioned and released a plan of its own, recommending that Bell Labs be razed to make way for golf links, equestrian grounds, and million-dollar houses, among other projects. The building, the report suggests, is nothing more than a rapidly expiring white elephant, past the point of resuscitation.
Bell Labs has already survived one call for demolition, proposed a few years ago by a different firm interested in developing the site. Now a political battle is imminent in Holmdel, a town of 15,000-plus people with a median household income over $110,000, about how—if at all—the building can be adapted for 21st-century use. The fate of one of Saarinen's final projects, which brought many of a generation's finest minds to Holmdel—physicists and engineers working elbow-to-elbow on cutting-edge research—stands in the balance.
"I can't think of the last time a Saarinen-commissioned building was proposed for complete demolition," says Adrian Fine, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's director of the Center for State and Local Policy. "To allow this building to be knocked down," says Michael Calafati, principal of Trenton's Historic Building Architects and chair of the historic resources committee of AIA-New Jersey, "would be the height of shortsightedness."
Man With a Plan
On a recent afternoon, in the midst of a snowstorm, I met the president of Somerset Development, Ralph Zucker, for a tour of Bell Labs, its shimmering glass walls reflecting the white landscape. "I was blown away when I saw it for the first time a few years ago," Zucker says. "I don't want to say the building spoke to me, but it definitely felt right. It has great bones."
Aside from an audible leak in one corner of the roof that we hear as we stroll around, the building appears to be in good shape. Complex calculations cover a chalkboard in an executive's old office. The original glass elevators still work. Near the main entrance, the sunken reception area, with its black Knoll-type benches, evokes an air of 1960s corporate culture glamorized today by the television show "Mad Men." The building has suffered unsympathetic alterations—additional office space was wedged in on the ground floor—and was expanded twice, in the 1960s and '80s, but Saarinen's original design remains largely intact.
Zucker likes to call Bell Labs a mini city, and it's easy to see why: there's a kitchen and dining hall, a gym with lockers and showers, an underground garage that once housed a fire truck in case of emergencies, an auditorium where he recently gave a public presentation of his plan—everything powered by three massive boilers in the basement.
Which is why Zucker, a New Urbanist who has a handful of New Jersey projects to his credit that focus on community-building, immediately conceived of a mixed-use redevelopment plan. The days when a single tenant could occupy the building have passed, he says: "People are beginning to realize that Google's not coming."
Zucker envisions Bell Labs as offices, a health club, retail stores, hotel, higher education facility, and top-floor penthouse condos with sweeping views—in short, as a new town center for Holmdel, where people can walk to get a cup of coffee or the newspaper. The yearly economic benefit for Holmdel, he estimates: more than $4.2 million.
The transformation will require changes to the building—for one, opening the side curtain walls to make the atrium open air. It's an idea Zucker lifted from a recent charette hosted by the New Jersey Society of Architects, AIA New Jersey, Preservation New Jersey, and the National Trust, among other groups, which explored strategies to save the site.
What concerns preservationists are the 600 housing units Zucker says are necessary to make the project economically viable. The landscape here was no afterthought: The celebrated firm of Sasaki, Walker & Associates worked with Saarinen to design a 127-foot-high water tower near the main entrance. (Though it looks like an upside-down flying saucer supported by three prongs, the tower is in fact shaped like a transistor, which was invented here by Bell scientists just before the current building was constructed). They situated reflecting pools in front of the building and designed a roadway that rings the site, landscaping it with thousands of trees. From above, the design they created resembles a very mod airplane.
Zucker plans to minimize the impact of his proposed housing by situating most of it along the interior road that circles the site, preserving the views of the pools and water tower. And he remains open to input, he says.
"Somerset has been very receptive and responsive so far," says Ron Emrich, executive director of Preservation New Jersey. He hopes the two sides can continue to work together to refine the details of the housing—scope, aesthetics, location.
"Far Too Zealous"
Serena DiMaso, Holmdel's mayor, is more pointed in her criticism of Somerset's plan. "It's far too zealous. It's something that will change the face of our community forever. Personally, I don't think it will change it positively," she says. DiMaso's concerns: increased traffic will overrun the town, and an influx of new residents with children will crowd the school system, leading to rising costs and higher taxes—a concern echoed by some residents at a public hearing in February.
The Jan. 26 report commissioned by Holmdel's township committee, and composed by Reva Partners, a redevelopment firm, recommended a dramatically different approach to redeveloping the site: "Given the costs of retrofitting the building, we recommend that the existing structure be demolished." Aside from a golf course fronted by houses priced at $2 to $3 million, recommendations included building 150 more moderately priced homes (significantly fewer units than Somerset has proposed, DiMaso notes), two municipal buildings, a community center, and movie studio.
For preservationists, the report's most glaring omission was any mention of the site's historic importance. Janet Berk, a township committeewoman, also found the paper unconvincing. "There was a lot missing," she said, including economic data and the question of who would shoulder the cost of the projects. "I don't think there are sound arguments as to why the building should be torn down."
More analysis will be done by a commission of redevelopment experts, local officials, and Somerset, DiMaso says: "It's great the building was built by a famous architect, great we had a famous landscape architect, but it's more about the people who worked inside it. If we can't preserve the building, at least we can preserve the history with a museum of sorts that recognizes the great inventions that happened at the site."
In the coming weeks, Zucker will approach the township committee with a more detailed proposal, seeking approval for zoning changes that would permit his multi-use plan for the building. (Currently, the site is zoned for office and laboratory use only.) And from that political battle, the future of Bell Labs will begin to emerge.
Voices of Bell Labs
For the employees who worked there, many of whom still live in Holmdel, the thought of losing Bell Labs stirs strong—and often complicated—emotions. "I was part of the first group to occupy the building in 1962," says Bob Lucky, who invented the adaptive equalizer, a key component of modern-day modems. "I remember driving up early that first morning and seeing this big black box in the mist rising from the reflecting pool." (Solid black glass was initially installed that didn't reflect the landscape, he says, a mistake that was soon corrected.)
"Bell Labs was the mecca of research, the crossroads of the research world. Everybody came through here," Lucky says. (Five Nobel Prize-winning scientists worked at Bell Labs.) "I always think about those days, in the 1960s and '70s, when we didn't know how good we had it to work in some wonderful place with great people to do great things."
Saarinen had located the labs in the interior of the building, to give scientists privacy—a feature that didn't sit well with Lucky. "I worked 30 years with no window. This psychologically damaged me," he says with a laugh.
Driving by Bell Labs now inspires for him a lingering sadness. "There is a terrible sense of forlornness about it. It's amazing how a glass-and-steel building can acquire an emptiness that's discernible from afar," he says. "The last thing we want is to raze the building and build a whole bunch of McMansions."
John Strand, a former employee who lives in Holmdel, told a local newspaper he would consider moving into housing on the site. And Lee Beaumont, who worked in the building for nearly 15 years in software development, remembers Bell Labs as having "a simple yet brilliant elegance. The public areas were grand and beautiful. The works areas were compact and functional." His hope: that the building once again be used to "solve the world's most difficult, urgent, and important problems."
Before my tour with Zucker came to an end, we stood on a catwalk on the building's top floor, and he echoed a similar sentiment. "We know this is too significant for Holmdel, for New Jersey—it's a worldwide resource—it's too important to get bogged down by political passions," he said. "When you come up here"—a howling wind broke the otherwise eerie silence—"that's when you know that you can't let this thing be knocked down. It's simply overpowering."
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