Wright's Baghdad opera house and Gammage Auditorium: in search of regional modernity

Adaptation of the Baghdad scheme to Tempe entailed changes in overtly symbolic forms. While the portal arches flanking the Baghdad Opera House were to have roundels containing scenes from The Arabian Nights, the arch roundels of precast concrete flanking the Gammage Auditorium were to have sculpted cast-metal bas-reliefs of Arizona history, like those Wright had proposed for the Arizona state capitol. In both auditoriums, Wright recommended that historical images in the portal arches be visible from inside the circular foyer. In the Tempe auditorium's domed crown, Wright replaced the figure of Aladdin and his lamp atop Baghdad's dome with a statue of "the individual, his majesty the American citizen, with his lamp, the imagination," housed in a domical metal and glass lantern, evoking the water domes on the site. Tempe would have no planetarium, but where the stage and auditorium circles intersected on their southeast side, Wright planted a tapering, spirelike television tower, presumably for the public television station that Gammage then advocated for the university. In both Baghdad and Tempe, the desert climate suggested a shading circular colonnade. At Tempe, the tall columns' capitals have been described both as an image of parted raised curtains and as a conventionalization of the date palm trees that line the highway fronting the auditorium. Such trees, native to the Middle East, were imported to Arizona in the late nineteenth century. (101) In resituating his design for the Baghdad Opera House in Tempe, Wright thus retained features that were appropriate to its function as an auditorium and to its desert site as a modern roadscape.

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Modifications to Wright's Design after His Death

On June 29, 1959, Wright's drawings for the Fine Arts Center were first published, two days after Gammage had shown them to the Board of Regents. He was concerned that the project would not be approved, and when the regents met in June, "there was some difference of opinion as to the suitability of the type of architecture contemplated." (102) Kay Gammage explained:

   He knew from the beginning that selling the Board of Regents on that
   building for that money was going to be a terribly difficult thing to
   do. And it was. They didn't like the design all that much.... The
   Regents were afraid of it, because they were afraid of being
   criticized if they went forward with it. They were afraid that it was
   just too far out for the average person. (103)

One regent claimed that "the rounded auditorium entrance looked like a merry-go-round." Another "questioned whether the Wright buildings would fit in with present ASU buildings," saying, "We have to be cautious" because Wright was "unconventional" and "controversial." A third thought that the project "looked like Disneyland," which had opened in 1955. This comparison recalled the issue of Phoenix's dependence on Southern Californian capital, education, and culture, which Gammage's generation had worked to lessen by establishing resources in the area to make it a more competitive alternative to Los Angeles. Gammage assured the regents that "the legislature would be asked only for funds necessary for the functional buildings, not the artistic features such as the statue to top the auditorium dome. Private donations would be sought for these items." (104) The board authorized Gammage to engage architects for designs, yet without any compensation until the state had allocated funds.