Philip Johnson (revisited)

With the recent announcement that the Cleveland Clinic itends to bulldoze the former Cleveland Play House Theaters designed by Philip Johnson (Cleveland Arts Prize for Architecture, 1972) many of my theater friends are condemning and lamenting the move. While I am sympathetic to anyone who mourns the loss of any site which is a repository to good memories, claims that the building is "historic" don't hold water with me. 

The Play House worked in many different venues prior to consolidating into the former Sears Building at 8500 Euclid, and I was never so joyful as when it was announced they found a new home in Playhouse Square, where they are today.

The building created by Johnson in 1983 was a lazy cash grab in which he recycled old ideas and designed yet another proscenium stage for the company, a hall with terrible acoustics, awful sight lines, and useless "boxes". Plain Dealer theater critic Marianne Evett called the design of this new, 644-seat Kenyon C. Bolton Theatre, “appallingly short-sighted … aimed at public grandeur rather than furthering the art of theater.”

Following the unrest of the 1970s, many suburban whites declared they would never again visit downtown, and there were also those (like my parents) who would drive to this oasis of white privilege, in the center of a largely African American neighborhood, to park, scurry into the place, get their theater and jet directly back home.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan and supporter of the Cleveland Play House. I also have many incredible memories of the facility, like witnessing the Doris Baizley adaptation of A Christmas Carol starring Wayne Turney in the Drury, staging the first public reading of Sarah Morton’s Eighth Wonder of the World on the stage of the Brooks, and when Sherrod Brown read a scene from I Hate This on the stage of the Bolton.

Dobama Theatre produced several shows in the blackbox space (for which Johnson deserves credit, at least) including the world premiere of Morton’s Night Bloomers. One day I will spill the tea about that production, it was quite an adventure.

But by their own estimation, the Play House paid a million dollars a year just to keep the lights on in that vast, cavernous institution. The building is not beautiful, it’s not practical, it is not historic.

And it was designed by Philip Johnson. Eleven years ago as I was studying Cleveland in the 1930s I learned a lot about Johnson which made me like him even less. I will not miss this theater space.

Update: January 17, 2023

Sources:
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History 
Cleveland Clinic to demolish ex-Cleveland Play House by Ken Prendergast, Neo-Trans Blog (1112/2021) 
Cleveland Arts Prize 
"Showtime in Cleveland: The Rise of a Regional Theater Center" by John Vacha (2001)

Philip Johnson

Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) is the famous bald architect with the big, round glasses.

Born in Cleveland, Johnson's ancestry is Dutch. He is descended from Jacques Cortelyou who mapped out the town plan for New Amsterdam for Peter Stuyvestant. Studying philosophy and history at Harvard, he took several long breaks to tour Europe where he developed his passion for architecture and fascism.

With fellow travelers he championed the modern style of architecture, creating the earthshaking show The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 at the Museum of Modern Art. However, he resigned his post at MOMA in the 1930s to dabble in journalism and criticize the "failure" of the fledgling welfare state. He became a foreign correspondent for Father Coughlin's magazine, Social Justice.

He was "enthralled" by Hitler, and became a disciple of Lawrence Dennis, who predicted that Capitalism was doomed, and that fascism was America's only bulwark against Communism. In 1934 he and some friends formed the National party, though it attracted little interest. He went to Louisiana to work for Huey Long, and after that man was assassinated, found his way to Coughlin's headquarters in Royal Oak, Michigan. In addition to the writing gig, the radio priest tapped Johnson for political organizing for his National Union party.

For ten years, Philip Johnson espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric until he followed the Nazi army into the invasion of Poland as a correspondent. He returned to the United States and enlisted in the Army.

In 1983 he designed the big, ugly extension of the Cleveland Play House and the big, dumb Bolton Theatre.

Sources: Wikipedia
Journal of Architectural Education
The Washington Post
Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, The Father of Hate Radio