For architect Eugene C. Hopkins FAIA, bricks and mortar hold the past together.
In the stately Senate Appropriations Room of the Michigan capitol building, a tour guide is settling a visiting group
of restive fourth-graders into the gallery seats. The guide will give a little history about the room, the former Michigan Supreme Court chambers. Maybe he will mention that the room, measuring 30 by 54-and-a-half with a 20-foot ceiling, was home to the court from January 1879 to January 1970. Maybe he will note that the 60 judges who sat on the bench during that time heard nearly 38,000 cases.
Eugene C. Hopkins
He will not mention that the current desks that look so authentic (while in fact designed to hold laptop computers), exist thanks to a man right there in the room with them.
“From designing light fixtures, desks and carpets we touched all aspects of this space, including researching historic paint colors,” says Eugene Hopkins (T’72).
“It’s very gratifying to have that kind of overall influence on the space. For citizens of Michigan, the capitol is our iconic building.”
Hopkins should know – as of this past June he is the official architect of the capitol of Michigan.
Blueprint for an Architect
We tend to think of architects as coming from cities where there is a predominance of built space tense with the interplay of different styles and historical epochs. Not Hopkins.
“Growing up on a dairy farm I was exposed to a lot of aspects of farming – not only equipment, but the buildings,” he says. “My dad built tool sheds and barns, and I always loved doing that.”
The future architect whose focus would be historic preservation himself attended a vanishing piece of Americana – a one-room country school, which got annexed into the “big city” school system of Belding when Hopkins was in the 7th grade.
“The annexation exposed me to a drafting class, which I loved. It was easy for me to visualize three-dimensional objects and put them down on paper,” Hopkins says.
Just a week after his graduation from Belding High School in 1970, Hopkins took his interest in buildings and drafting to Ferris, graduating in 1972 with an associate degree in Architectural Drafting. Hopkins says that his experience at Ferris was “phenomenal and intense.” Thanks to one of his professors, George Wallace, Hopkins applied to the University of Michigan and was accepted into the architecture program – despite the U of M primarily accepting, at that time, students who had gone through its pre-architecture program.
He completed his bachelor’s in architecture in ’74 and stayed on in Ann Arbor to study for his master’s – a quest that was shortened thanks to his time at Ferris, where he had tested out of some required courses and was counseled to take more advanced classes. “Because of the guidance I received at Ferris, one whole additional year in the master’s program transferred from Ferris to the U of M, so in just one more year I received my master’s in ’75.”
The View from the Top
In a professional career touching four different decades, Hopkins has been involved in restoration and adaptive re-use of dozens of historic structures in Michigan alone,
including the 1915 Detroit Athletic Club, The Christman Company’s 1928 Mutual Building in Lansing, the 1887 Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and the cinema architecture of
the Ann Arbor Michigan Theater– although none is more important to Hopkins than the seat of Michigan state government. “We almost lost the capitol in the 70s – it was
almost torn down. Luckily, that didn’t happen.”
In 1988, Richard C. Frank FAIA – an architect who was a driving force behind the historic preservation movement in Michigan – called upon the firm in which Hopkins was a principal, Architects Four, to play a lead role in the capitol’s renovation.
“The challenge was to take a beautiful historic building that had undergone many changes and make it modern without compromising its historic integrity,” says Hopkins. “I think people are affected by the majesty of the building’s environment. There’s a huge respect for the building.”
The two men had previously worked together. In 1980, Frank invited Hopkins to join his firm, Preservation Urban Design Inc. – an opportunity that gave the younger architect the chance to deepen his interest in historic preservation.
“I had the chance to work on projects like the Old Post Office in Washington D.C., as well as the Library of Congress. I did the material conservation analysis for the restoration of the Jefferson Building. At the Smithsonian Arts and Industry I led the exterior restoration of the Arts and Industry building,” recalls Hopkins. (The D.C. projects led the Virginia-based McKay, Marshall and McMillan to buy the firm and eliminate the Ann Arbor office, giving rise to the birth of Architects Four.)
Frank pushed Hopkins to give back to the profession. In response, Hopkins became involved with the American Institute of Architects, becoming president of the Michigan chapter in 1994. He was a national board member from 1998-2004, which was the year he was elected national president of the AIA.
“I was home only five weekends that whole year,” recalls Hopkins. “It was an incredible opportunity to be an advocate for the profession not just in this country, but around
the world.” For example, Hopkins traveled to Beijing to sign an accord with the Chinese that facilitated the sharing of knowledge and created opportunities for the
transportability of licensing for architects in the two countries. He also signed the AIA/National Park Service/Library of Congress partnership for documenting and
preserving the drawings of this country’s most significant structures.
Preserving the Future
Strolling the corridors of the capitol building Hopkins greets, and is greeted by, a succession of tour guides, receptionists and security guards. His familiarity with the capitol and its workings comes from deep affection for the important role the building plays in the state’s civic life. “Historic preservation is not just about a structure – it’s about all the space around it, the context in which it exists,” he says.
Hopkins is able to preserve and create such spaces and contexts as a principal in Ann Arbor-based Hopkins Burns Design Studio. The firm came into being as the result of
“de-merging” from SmithGroup, which had merged with Architects Four in 1999. “Even though SmithGroup is the oldest continuously practicing architectural engineering
firm in the country, at that time they had no historic preservation expertise,” says Hopkins, who along with partner Tamara Burns AIA, continues to provide preservation
expertise to SmithGroup.
“Hopkins Burns’ focus is the same as when I joined Frank in 1980 – looking at the bigger role that architecture plays in blending the natural environment with the built environment,” he says. Their mission includes “historic preservation and communities by design with architectural expertise in the preservation, restoration and adaptive re-use of existing buildings and in the design of new places in downtown neighborhoods that are context sensitive and creatively fresh.”
In addition to his role as architect for the capitol of Michigan, he has been involved with the capitol building not only professionally, but through his work with the nonprofit Friends of the Capitol as vice chair, a position he will serve in through at least 2011.
Looking forward, Hopkins notes that many structures we don’t necessarily think of as “historic” are inching toward that designation. For a building to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places, it must generally be at least 50 years old. “Historic preservation isn’t just about Victorian architecture. Some of the buildings from the 1960s and urban renewal are getting close to historic status, so it creates some very interesting design opportunities for the profession.”
The novelist William Faulkner (who spent years renovating Rowan Oak, his pre-Civil War Greek Revival home) once famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” To walk the halls of Michigan’s capitol building with Hopkins is to get some palpable feeling for the ways in which the past exerts its influence on the present. Good stewardship of that past doesn’t mean entombing it, but – like period-authentic desks designed to hold laptops – adapting it for needs we will have for years to come.
Crimson & Gold
Crimson & Gold