Could Colleges Recycle Buildings From Elsewhere?

A thriving Roman Catholic parish in Norcross, Ga., wants to buy an elegant, unused 1911 church building in Buffalo, N.Y., so that it can be dismantled, shipped south, rebuilt, and returned to use, The Buffalo News reports. Could a college do something similar? Buy and preserve an unused building from another higher-education institution, perhaps, or a non-college building that would make a great addition to a campus?

It’s an interesting question. According to the News, the Diocese of Buffalo is all for the church-moving plan, which some people are describing as “preservation by relocation.” The church, named for St. Gerard, closed in January. It was modeled on a Roman basilica, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, and has columns, coffered ceilings, and a dome whose interior is painted with a fresco.

A former parish trustee, Dorothy Eckl, said that the building needed a lot of repairs, and that she would rather see it rebuilt in Georgia than watch it deteriorate in its original location. But some Buffalo preservation activists are horrified. “How many other buildings will be harvested like this?” asked Timothy A. Tielman, executive director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture & Culture. “Once the gates are open, it becomes permissible to take down buildings.”

The cost of dismantling and moving the building has been estimated at $3-million, the News article says, but the price tag for rebuilding it is still unknown.

Some universities have reused buildings near their campuses that were originally constructed for other purposes. The University of Pittsburgh, for instance, renovated a grand Masonic temple to house its alumni, admissions, and financial-aid offices. The Maryland Institute College of Art reused a spacious Baltimore & Ohio Railroad passenger station, and Harvard University turned a former power plant into LEED-platinum offices for its facilities staff. At least three institutions — Flagler College, Roosevelt University, and the University of Tampa — occupy notable former hotels.

Far fewer buildings have been moved to college campuses. Pitzer College, in Claremont, Calif., saved a 1902 house in the Arts and Crafts style and cut it in three parts for the trip to the campus, where it serves as a student center. Offhand, no other buildings that have been moved to colleges come to mind.

But that’s not to say that preserving buildings by taking them apart and reconstructing them on campuses elsewhere wouldn’t be a good idea. Maybe trustees who dislike contemporary design would be more excited by a preservation project that brought an institution a handsome work of architecture as well as new space. And reusing an existing building’s material is a highly sustainable approach to construction, assuming the cost remains reasonable. Obviously an old building’s utilities could be replaced during the reconstruction, and changes could be made to provide handicap access and meet the college’s current needs.

There are lots of unused buildings out there, and plenty of architects who could turn them into attractive, usable campus structures. What do you think?