Weese, Harry

Weese, Harry
3300 Fairlawn Drive Columbus, IN 47203

Harry Weese is associated in Columbus, Indiana, with an unusually broad range of projects, including Lillian C. Schmitt Elementary School, Northside Middle School, Otter Creek Clubhouse, the Irwin Union Bank & Trust Company Eastbrook and Hope branches, First Baptist Church, the Cummins Engine Company Technical Center, the COSCO office building, the Dorel office building, and Hamilton Center. Chicago architect Harry Weese designed more buildings in Bartholomew County than any other architect in the 1950s and 1960s. Known for his independent and imaginative modernism, Weese played a foundational role in Columbus’s architectural story: his design for Schmitt Elementary helped launch what became the Cummins Foundation Architecture Program, and he went on to design more buildings in Bartholomew County than any other architect in the 1950s and 1960s. He studied at MIT and Yale, later founded Harry Weese Associates, and was recognized nationally for both architecture and historic preservation. He was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1961.

Columbus, Indiana projects
• Lillian C. Schmitt Elementary School, 2675 California Street, 1957.
• Northside Middle School, 1400 27th Street, 1960 program award / later completed.
• Otter Creek Clubhouse, 11522 E 50 N, 1964.
• Irwin Union Bank & Trust Company Eastbrook Branch (currently Lucabe), Eastbrook Plaza, 25th Street at National Road, 1961.
• Hope Branch bank (later the Hope Star-Journal building), 645 Harrison Street, Hope, Indiana, 1958.
• First Baptist Church, 3300 Fairlawn Drive, 1965.
• Cummins Engine Company Technical Center, 1900 McKinley Avenue, 1968.
• COSCO, Inc. Office Building, 2525 State Street, 1962.
• Hamilton Center (now Hamilton Community Center & Ice Arena), 2501 Lincoln Park Drive, 1958.

Honors
• Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA), 1961.
• Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, 1964.
• AIA Architecture Firm Award (Harry Weese & Associates), 1978.

Work in Columbus

Weese Left a Lasting Legacy in Columbus

From The Republic newspaper insert “Cummins Technical Center – 50 Years of Innovation,” Oct. 5, 2017

Harry Weese, who designed the Cummins Tech Center, is important in this small, architectural mecca because, with 16 local structures to his name, he reigns among the most prolific high-profile designers in Columbus.

Nationally, he was celebrated for such edifices as the massive Washington Metro subway system, the focus of an American Institute of Architects’ 25-year award. Weese died in 1998 at age 83 after substantial professional success and equal personal struggles, including a prolonged battle with alcohol.

The Illinois native boasted more than 1,000 buildings on his resume. But Columbus’ 16 projects, including several structures for Cummins, gave an upstart Weese a national name in the 1950s alongside other design heavyweights and friends such as Eero Saarinen, the creative mind behind the Miller House and North Christian Church.

Bloomington architect Marleen Newman looks at the designs of Weese — the man who gave Columbus the medieval-flavored First Baptist Church and the homestyled Schmitt Elementary School, among other structures — and struggled to find the right words to describe his impact here and nationally.

“He was a genius,” said Newman, referring especially to his casual, 15-minute building scribblings featuring minute details from which working drawings could sprout. “You cannot imagine all of his ideas and sketches and how prolific he was. I wonder how he ever had time to sleep.”

And it was Columbus that gave him his launching pad.

“He was treated like a lion in Columbus,” said Robert Bruegmann, the Chicago-based author of the tribute book, The Architecture of Harry Weese.

“I’m not sure he would have done his other works without Columbus,” Bruegmann said.

Bruegmann was the keynote speaker at a 2014 symposium that highlighted Weese’s work here. He spoke in part on Weese’s relationship with Saarinen and with J. Irwin Miller, the catalyst for attracting top designers to work in Columbus.

Though Weese and Saarinen were friends, Saarinen once wanted to fight Weese in the late 1930s when Weese had a few different designs — on Saarinen’s girlfriend, according to Bruegmann.

However, the architectural world — which cheered Weese as a star in the mid-1970s — dumped him by the 1980s when younger colleagues brought their whimsy to bear on emerging, post-modern influences. Bruegmann said they were fanciful influences that Weese hated.

“He accepted influences from all over the place near the beginning of his career,” Bruegmann said. “But he seemed to have gotten fixed in one particular mode.”

Kelly Wilson, director of the Indiana University Center for Art and Design, is fine with that one mode of modernism. When he began studying design in the 1970s, Wilson rarely heard Weese’s name.

But when he moved here a few years ago and first walked into First Baptist Church, he saw the structure’s 45-foot, V-shaped ceiling looking as if heaven’s arms were reaching down. And then he saw the man’s greatness.

“Every time I walk into that sanctuary, I take a breath in,” Wilson said. “And everybody I know who’s seen it agrees that the designer was a person who knew how to reach deep into the human psyche to touch something common to all of us.”

Weese exhibited that touch with Schmitt Elementary as well as anywhere else, according to Wilson. There, Weese used something of a trademark here — a gabled roof on the front, looking very much like a home.

“He had a kit of parts (he used),” Wilson said. “Look at Schmitt. It’s amazing. Here’s a building for kids, many of whom are leaving their mothers and homes for the first time. And he decided to put them into something they already were familiar with — a house.”

Apparently for Weese, the warmth already reigned — right in his basic designs.