Tyler School of Art will relocate

Tyler School of Art was founded in Elkins Park as an idyllic retreat where students could get away from the distractions of the city and immerse themselves totally in the arts.

Seventy-five years later, the Temple University art school is ditching the leafy campus for an edgier, urban setting.

A sleek new $75 million building, opening in January, will anchor a growing arts hub on Temple's North Philadelphia campus and bring Tyler students closer to the city's bustling arts scene.

The glass-and-brick four-story building designed by house architect Carlos Jimenez, who specializes in art education spaces, will have 40 percent more space than the cramped and jerry-rigged mansion that has been the school's home since Stella Elkins Tyler donated her estate to Temple in the early 1930s.

The move cements Philadelphia's reputation as a vibrant arts community, with seven art schools in the city, more per capita than anywhere else in the country, said Happy Fernandez, president of rival Moore College of Art and Design.

"The wonderful thing about having it close by is that it means there are more opportunities for all of the cultural community in Philadelphia to connect and work with Tyler," she said.

It has been 20 years since Temple administrators decided that it would be cheaper to start from scratch than to renovate the aging Tyler building to meet safety and disability-access laws. Initially, resistance was as solid and immovable as a marble statue.

Faculty, alumni and students "didn't like it one bit," recalled chancellor David Adamany, who oversaw the planning when he was Temple president from 2000 to 2006. "People were attached."

Though the school was old and creaky, it was beloved by alumni.

"They had this romantic notion they wanted Tyler to remain in the spot where they had gone to school," said Patti Dougherty, president of the 7,000-member Tyler alumni association. "If they hadn't been back in 20 years, they weren't seeing how it was today."

What would greet them is a school so crowded that classes are held in garages, sculptures are exhibited on the grass, and the cafeteria is a bad joke. A few years ago, the floor fell out from under a sculpture studio in Elkins Hall.

Opposition has eased over the years, and administrators are quick to point out that even die-hard supporters of the Elkins Park campus are won over after one look at the new state-of-the-art building.

The new Tyler is a modern masterpiece compared with the refined quirkiness of the old school. It will boast larger exhibition halls, bigger studios, better equipment, and more modern facilities for creating large installation pieces, something that was virtually impossible in the former space.

University officials say it also will have the largest green space on campus and will bring together the School of Music - which is next door and will share a large art-filled atrium - and the School of Communications and Theater, which is across the street

"This feels like a contemporary art school," said assistant dean Gregory Murphy. "Tyler is about creativity and pushing contemporary boundaries, and to have anything other than a contemporary building is odd."

The facility is almost all publicly funded, with $61.5 million coming from the state and $8 million of Temple's own money. The school still needs $5.2 million and is selling naming rights for everything from a studio to the entire building.

"I wish I was the law, medical or business school dean," said interim dean Therese Dolan. "Their alumni have deep pockets. Ours are still waitressing."

Peggy Amsterdam, president of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, recently took a tour and was impressed, even though she has fond memories of taking art classes at Tyler as a teenager.

"It was idyllic. There were beautiful plantings. It was one of those little gems that you have when you're growing up that you don't appreciate," she said. "It smelled of linseed oil, which is from the oil paint. It's a smell that you never forget."

But the new school reflects the changing nature of art.

"The technology has changed. The scale in which people do art now has changed, and it really needs the kind of space that they're going to have," Amsterdam said.

Though only 8.6 miles from the city, Tyler's grassy 12-acre campus, a few blocks off Cheltenham Avenue, has been a lonely outpost. The school plans to sell the property.

"We have wonderful shows; the students are so talented," said Dolan, who has taught art history at Tyler since the 1970s. "But when they hang their BFA and MFA exhibitions, nobody but us sees it."

Tyler opened its doors in 1935 with 12 students in its freshman class. Now 750 are crammed into four buildings designed to hold about 400, said Dolan.

The school has come up with creative ways to squeeze them all in. A garage behind the aging mansion has been transformed into a glass studio. With only two "glory holes," or furnaces, students have to show up at dawn to get a turn.

Studio space is tight and lacking modern facilities such as large kilns to make bigger works of art. Two newer buildings hold classrooms, offices and work space.

But the equipment is outdated, dorms are so packed that many students live in nearby apartments, the gym consists of a treadmill and two stationary bikes, and the name of the cafeteria, the Starving Artist Cafe, says it all.

"It's really the most pathetic part," said Dolan.

Carmina Cianciulli, assistant dean of admissions, who graduated from Tyler and works on the campus, said applications for next year's bachelor of fine arts program were up 50 percent, mostly due to buzz over the new building.

"That's huge," she said.

Her office is scheduled to move in October. Students will start classes on the main campus in January with a grand opening planned for April.

"I would pack my bags today, I'm so excited," she said.

Despite its creaky facilities, Tyler ranks 14th among arts schools in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Angela Washko, a rising senior who is studying painting and photography, said she had mixed emotions about the move.

"Up here, we're a little bit isolated," she said. "But it's nice because you can really focus in your studio and be really intense."

And while students were looking forward to collaborating with music, architecture and theater students, "there's a certain nostalgia about the community here. We're very small, very tight-knit," she said.

Working in close quarters and under difficult conditions builds camaraderie. Because there is little space for large sculptures, for instance, students often exhibit them on the lawn. Washko remembers a giant human-sized hamster wheel that everyone rolled around in.

But with studios up to four times as large as they are now, she said, "maybe moving from this nice, quaint little location won't be so bad."

Entire building   $7.5 million

Atrium   $2 million

Professional gallery   $1.5 million

Student gallery   $1 million

Studio areas   $750,000 each

Studios/suites   $500,000 each

Studios/classrooms   $100,000 each

Computer labs   $50,000 each

Graduate studios   $25,000 each

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