Fine Arts to expand to U.'s Skinner Hall

The Blauhaus shed on 33rd Street could be destroyed when the move is complete. After years of searching for a new location, the Graduate School of Fine Arts will soon expand into Skinner Hall, which currently houses the Faculty Club, University Provost Robert Barchi announced yesterday. The 44,000-square-foot facility at 36th and Walnut streets will undergo $5.2 million worth of major renovations to accommodate the Fine Arts program, which will be in place in Skinner Hall by the summer of 2000 in time for fall classes of that year, according to Executive Vice President John Fry. The move will likely lead to the demolition of the Blauhaus on 33rd Street between Walnut and Chestnut streets. All of the necessary funds for the project have been raised and work will begin this summer when the Faculty Club moves into the Inn at Penn at Sansom Common. Barchi said the programs housed in the building will be directed primarily at undergraduates and will include space for individual studio work, group training, photography, pottery, painting and print-making, as well as computer labs. He added that the renovations will include an interior restructuring and an exterior face-lift to make the building more compatible with its surroundings. Officials had planned two years ago to move the department to Addams Hall in a former church at 33rd and Chestnut streets, but a four-alarm blaze destroyed the building and prevented the move from materializing. The space available in the Skinner Hall facility is "comparable" in size to the space that would have been available in the church, Barchi said. Skinner Hall is "ideally located in terms of the educational missions that we had in mind," noted Barchi, who added that the building's high ceilings, large rooms and plentiful light sources make it an exemplary facility to house the school's activities. One possibility for altering the exterior is to encase the side of the building facing Walnut Street with glass so that student activity in the building would be visible to passers-by and would mirror the design of Sansom Common. "It would be nice if the facade facing Sansom Common could be more interactive, more open," Barchi said. A new entranceway to the facility is also being considered to "create a signature for the building," he added. GSFA Dean Gary Hack did not return calls for comment last night. One-third of the necessary funding for the latest renovations will come from the University's insurance settlement for the church, Fry said. The rest of the money for the renovations will consist of gifts from private donors, most notably Barbara Coylton -- the widow of 1934 University alumnus Charles Addams -- who originally agreed to fund the department's move to the church. Though Coylton had previously decided to pay for the new Fine Arts building with the understanding that it would be housed in Asbury Church, she has agreed to make a substantial contribution to the Skinner Hall facility, Fry said. The GSFA is currently housed in both Meyerson Hall and the Blauhaus, the Fine Arts shed located on 33rd Street between Walnut and Chestnut streets, which will probably be demolished when all of the programs currently housed there can be moved into the new facility, Barchi said. It is unclear whether facilities in Meyerson will be affected. The Blauhaus was built as a temporary structure in 1992 after the GSFA vacated Smith Hall to make way for the Roy and Diana Vagelos Laboratories. It was constructed cheaply, with plywood falls about three inches thinner than those of a standard structure. Use of the building drew fire last March when a student working inside the shed was hit in the thigh by a stray bullet during a shoot-out at 33rd and Walnut streets following a high school basketball game at the Palestra.

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