Ole Virginny Modern

All that the Reynolds Metals Co. asked for was a new set of the most efficient offices they could get, and Gordon Bunshaft, design partner of famed Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, produced a high-efficiency aluminum, glass and steel building, set squarely behind its own private reflecting pool five miles north of downtown Richmond, citadel of the Old Dominion's fanciers of mellow brick, white porticoes and neo-Monticello atmosphere. Reynolds expected furious protests from wave on wave of outraged Virginians. Instead, the distinguished director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Leslie Cheek Jr., told them that whether they knew it or not, their new building was the finest bit of architecture to be erected in Virginia since Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia.

Director Cheek, a Tennessee-born architectural buff with a graduate degree from Yale ('35), was prepared to prove his point. He asked experts to pick the "Twelve Best Buildings in the Old Dominion since 1776." Then he sent pictures of these buildings and the Reynolds building to 13 top architectural deans, critics and architects for comment. Only one quarreled with his judgment that Reynolds was "the best since Jefferson." Thundered Frank Lloyd Wright, who concedes excellence to few other men: "If anything less Virginian could be imagined, I can not."

Final test for Director Cheek came when a black-tie cross section of Virginia's first families turned up at the museum, inspected models of other Skidmore, Owings & Merrill buildings (Lever House, U.S. Air Force Academy), then went by bus to see the new Reynolds building in full scale. Even with the three-story office building's satiny aluminum trim, Virginians found much that was familiar. The courtyard was paved with familiar red brick, and the moon shone down on a five-jet fountain, holly bushes and a 40-ft. magnolia tree. But inside they found 14-ft.-high executive offices with cherry-paneled walls on which hung such moderns as Picasso and Clyfford Still. On the east and west facades were 880 huge aluminum louvers geared by a master clock to foil the sun from now until A.D. 2100. It was the museum's biggest opening night, and Director Cheek was delighted. Said he: "People came back thrilled and exhilarated. I hope we're helping make a handsomer world in Virginia."

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