"There is no art as impermanent as
architecture … The monuments of
our time stand, usually, on negotiable real estate; their value goes
down as land
value goes up.” Ada Louise Huxtable
Farewell to
IBM Building/50 Monroe Place
50 Monroe Place –
the IBM Building – was demolished earlier this year, thus ending its
47-year odyssey as one of Rockville first and most distinctive modernist
office buildings. Designed by Stanley H. Arthur for Bethesda builder
Otho Barkley, it was leased to the IBM Corporation shortly after its
completion in 1959, a move that signaled Rockville’s emergence as a
suburban center of post-war development, research, and technology. Its
environmental setting and orientation changed dramatically during the
1960s urban renewal, but its Bauhaus-inspired design was substantially
unaltered. Dwarfed by more recent hi-rise construction, the IBM
Building was an icon of Rockville’s evolving architectural streetscape
and the last vestige of Rockville’s main street, East Montgomery Avenue,
as it developed from the 1820s through the mid-1960s. In 2005, property
owners received a City permit to raze the building; plans for property
redevelopment are currently unknown.
50 Monroe Place –
the IBM Building – was demolished earlier this year, thus ending its
47-year odyssey as one of Rockville first and most distinctive modernist
office buildings. Designed by Stanley H. Arthur for Bethesda builder
Otho Barkley, it was leased to the IBM Corporation shortly after its
completion in 1959, a move that signaled Rockville’s emergence as a
suburban center of post-war development, research, and technology. Its
environmental setting and orientation changed dramatically during the
1960s urban renewal, but its Bauhaus-inspired design was substantially
unaltered. Dwarfed by more recent hi-rise construction, the IBM
Building was an icon of Rockville’s evolving architectural streetscape
and the last vestige of Rockville’s main street, East Montgomery Avenue,
as it developed from the 1820s through the mid-1960s. In 2005, property
owners received a City permit to raze the building; plans for property
redevelopment are currently unknown.