This month's museum pick...

Museum of Modern Architecture
(Columbus, Indiana)

North Church was built in 1964 and designed by Eero Saarinen, son of the famous Finnish architect who started Columbus on the road to architectural prominence.

First Christian Church, designed in 1942 by Eliel Saarinen, soon became a Columbus landmark. Large Arch, the sculpture in the forefront, was by Henry Moore.

Little Columbus, Indiana, Shines as a Museum of Modern Architecture

Some of the world’s most interesting museums are not only located off the beaten path, they are in their own category. Columbus, Indiana, 45 miles southeast of Indianapolis, is an outdoor museum that holds the power to surprise even the most experienced of travelers.

That’s because this little town of 40,000 has, over a 58-year period, accumulated a number of houses, churches, civic buildings, schools and office buildings that have been designed by some of the greatest architects of the 20^th century: I.M. Pei, Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, John Carl Warnecke, Edward Larabee Barnes, Roche Dinkeloo & Associates, Cesar Pelli, Richard Meier and Robert Stern. Add some sculptures by Henry Moore, Constantino Nivola and Jean Tinguely, and a golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones.

In 1991, when the American Institute of Architects asked its members to rank U.S. cities in terms of architectural quality and innovation, they ranked Chicago (2.8 million residents), New York City (7.4 million), Washington, DC (700,000), San Francisco (750,000) and Boston (580,000) as the nation’s top five. Columbus, IN was ranked sixth.

Columbus didn’t start out to be one of the world’s most concentrated sites of great architecture. Its start toward that status was modest enough: in 1942, the great Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen designed the First Christian Church. Twelve years later, his son, Eero, came to town to design the Irwin Union Bank’s central office. Within the next 10 years, 12 buildings by noted architects had gone up around town.

Even as Columbus became a small laboratory for the execution of great architecture on a modest scale, the town never succumbed to the temptation to undertake massive development or redevelopment schemes under the aegis of great architects. It continued steadily accumulating a project here, a project there, each of which added to the texture of the town without dominating it.

In the meantime, Columbus quietly began touting its architectural abundance, adding formal architectural tours to its cultural offerings and encouraging the architectural school at the campus of IUPU Columbus (Indiana University-Purdue University).  — Patrick Totty