Outdated Eyesore or Modern Masterpiece?

But in the button-down District, the International-style library was not a hit with everyone.

Weeks after its opening, Richard J. Wightman of the District wrote to The Washington Post and Times Herald that "the facade is an eyesore enough: a monstrous, girdered base for a Madison Avenue office slab in a hangover design from the 1950s. The interior is still worse: The overall impression is bleak sterility.''

Part of that bleakness results from budget cuts. Mies originally wanted the base of the building and parts of the lobby clad with marble and envisioned custom-designed furniture throughout. District officials objected. So Mies instead chose tan brick around the building and ordered chairs and tables off the shelf.

The building has been chronically sick, beginning with elevators that broke within days of its opening and reports of air ducts leading into brick walls. Time and again, the building closed because of a lack of air conditioning or heat. In 1976, a worker suffered second-degree burns to his head, neck and shoulders when a steam valve opened. The burned worker then tore a ligament in his leg trying to escape the hot steam and water.

But supporters say the Mies design should not be judged against those of ordinary buildings. After all, one doesn't buy a Jaguar for its reliability or gas mileage.

"We'd like to see the building saved,'' said Rebecca Miller, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, which also sponsored the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the library.

"We don't dictate use. But we'd like to see something that would not rip up the interior with walls and cubicles,'' she said. "It's a see-through building.''

Miller said modern architecture is playing a larger role in the preservation movement.

In January, the society hosted a two-day conference called DC Modern that highlighted the city's often neglected modernist buildings, such as the Martin Luther King Jr. library and the city's cluster of mid-century residential buildings in Southwest. Miller acknowledged the irony of helping to preserve buildings that replaced historic structures during redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s.

W. Kent Cooper, a District architect, said the library building could be renovated and reused as a library or a museum.

"I don't think the public totally understands what they've got and what they could have,'' he said. "It's going to be there and could contribute to the glory of the city instead of an eyesore.''

Six years ago, Cooper and other design and construction professionals with the D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects got together to imagine what a renovated library could look like. The black steel would be repainted silvery white, the dark window panes replaced with clear, modern glass that would reflect harmful rays. Mies designed the building to accommodate additional floors, so Cooper's group added another floor and a roof deck. Inside, a new open stairway would give patrons options other than the elevators.

Cooper said it was worth the effort to keep the library, which Mies never got to see finished. He died in 1969 at age 83.

"I don't think we ought to be throwing the building away,'' Cooper said.