Rothko Chapel begins upgrade project that will close beloved art temple for much of 2019 Photo of Molly Glentzer Molly Glentzer Dec. 10, 2018 Updated: Dec. 11, 2018 10:17 a.m. More Comments Print 11 1 of 11Barney Andrade (left), with Linbeck, removes the floor from one of the bungalows across the street from the Rothko Chapel, a first step in the demolition process. As much of the building as possible will be recycled, including the floor, as the bungalow is demolished to make way for a new Rothko Chapel visitors center on the site. The project Photo: Mark Mulligan, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer 2 of 11Demolition has started of one of the bungalows across the street from the Rothko Chapel. As much of the building as possible will be recycled, including the floor, as the bungalow is demolished to make way for a new Rothko Chapel visitors center on the site. The project is part of a master plan that also includes a major renovation of the Photo: Mark Mulligan, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer 3 of 11Demolition has started of one of the bungalows across the street from the Rothko Chapel. As much of the building as possible will be recycled, including the floor, as the bungalow is demolished to make way for a new Rothko Chapel visitors center on the site. The project is part of a master plan that also includes a major renovation of the Photo: Mark Mulligan, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

To the dismay of several surprised neighbors, reclamation crews began dismantling a bungalow at the northeast corner of the storied Menil enclave along Sul Ross Street on Monday. The demolition signals the first hard lifting of a $30 million, multi-phase project to upgrade the Rothko Chapel’s two-acre campus that will close the beloved art temple during much of 2019 and add three new buildings over several years.

Inside the chapel — one of the world’s most important public art sites — officials want Mark Rothko’s 14 monumental paintings to be seen in more natural light, as he intended them to be. The new buildings across the street will allow the Chapel to facilitate visitors and programs more easily than it can now.

The Rothko owns five lots on Sul Ross, one of which is empty. A two-story bungalow just west of the empty lot will be moved there and used as a guest house for visiting speakers and researchers. David Leslie, executive director of the Rothko Chapel, hopes three other bungalows can be moved and repurposed by others. Several unhealthy trees may be removed, although many new trees will be planted, he said.

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Construction begins early next year on the first new building, dubbed the Welcome House. The Chapel will close March 4 to receive a new central skylight and a reconfigured entry. If all is on schedule, the renovated chapel and the Welcome House will open late next year, along with a new energy facility — currently the mechanical systems reside in a pit that floods.

The Rothko board has worked quietly for several years with the New York firm Architecture Research Office on a master plan and the design of the new buildings, which Leslie said will be “accountable to the chapel” and also respectful of the Menil neighborhood’s modest spirit and scale.

“This is not a place where you can leave your imprint everywhere,” said Christopher Rothko, the son of Mark Rothko and chairman of the board’s “Opening Spaces” capital campaign.

News of the pending construction caught several neighbors off guard, including Toni Capra, the executive director of DaCamera, whose offices are in a two-story brick house next to the Rothko’s empty lot.

Capra is concerned about parking issues, which are already tight, as well as the noise and disruption several years of building could bring. “But growth signifies they’re in a position to be prosperous and make the chapel more accessible to people, which is good,” she said.

The Rothko board has raised about a third of the money it needs for the entire project. Phase II, with an expected completion date of 2022, will include a new administration/archive building and a program center that will share a plaza with the Welcome House; as well as a meditation garden next to the Chapel by the landscape design firm Nelson Byrd Woltz, which is enhancing green spaces across the grounds and creating a better gateway to the Menil campus proper.

“We have a symbiotic relationship,” Leslie said. “We want to keep that sense, and at the same time claim the Rothko Chapel identity as distinct.”

The chapel, which welcomes more than 100,000 people a year, will turn 50 in 2021, a milestone that prompted the plans.

A small retail operation, introductory information and other services in the Welcome House will improve hospitality and relieve pressure on the chapel, helping to restore its original sense of sanctity, Leslie and Rothko said. And when the program center opens, lectures and other events can be moved there.

Within the chapel, the aim is to get the luminosity of the center oculus “right again, for the first time,” Leslie said. Altered at least four times in its nearly 50-year history, the skylight has always been problematic, either letting in too much daylight or not enough. Mark Rothko created the paintings to scale in a skylit New York studio, but died before the chapel opened.

“My father said art is not about an experience; it is an experience,” said Christopher Rothko. “No place encapsulates that like the Rothko Chapel.”

George Sexton, whose lighting design firm also worked on the Menil Drawing Institute, has devised a new baffle/skylight system of fixed louvers that should cast Houston’s bright light evenly around the octagonal space, with unobtrusive artificial lighting when needed. While smart thinkers devised previous solutions, “we’ve learned from mistakes, and technology has improved,” Christopher Rothko said. “It isn’t simply a lighting question. It’s an architectural question.”

Architectural historian Stephen Fox, who serves on the Rothko’s construction committee, describes Sexton’s plan as a complex idea with a simple resolution. “It’s not something you will notice,” he said. “You’ll be aware of the light and the paintings, not the skylight.”

Outside the building, the changes will be more noticeable.

Longtime Sul Ross resident Geraldine Moohr appreciates improvements the Menil has made to the neighborhood in the past two years such as new sidewalks, tree plantings and home restorations, but the area has also lost some of the character she loved. “All of us who live here hate change,” she said. “I liked it funky, and I’ve had to adjust to it being neater and crisp.”

She was dismayed to learn that bungalows in the middle of the block would be replaced with contemporary buildings. “It’s not going to be taken enthusiastically,” she said.

Leslie said the Rothko organization reached out to the community and other institutions during its master planning process and has also published information on its website and in a season program guide. He has also met with a local civic association, although the immediate Menil enclave doesn't have one of its own.

The early 20th century bungalows that make the neighborhood unique and special have long posed dilemmas for Menil and Rothko officials. Howard Barnstone, a longtime Houston architect, had the “brilliant solution” of painting them all the same color, but keeping them maintained and updated is “an incredible institutional challenge,” said Fox. Related

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He noted that in the area around the Menil and Rothko campuses, the city is growing more dense: “That land has gone through many iterations even in the past 25 years, and the surrounding area has changed immensely.”

New retail developments have risen nearby on Alabama Street, and it’s anyone’s guess about what will be built on the old Key Map property that abuts the Rothko’s land. It’s also likely that the University of Saint Thomas will build sometime on property it owns on Yupon Street, across from the chapel.

“We are not anticipating great crowds descending on the neighborhood,” Fox said. The improvements are “part and parcel” of expansion across the Menil campus, and the Rothko group commissioned engineering studies on the bungalows and did everything it could to consider alternatives, he said. The Phase II Rothko development includes a small staff parking lot behind the new administration building.

Architects Stephen Cassell and Adam Yarinsky, with Architecture Research Office, said their firm’s designs are purposefully deferential to the neighborhood in a way that will also strengthen the presence of the chapel.

For instance, the welcome house will be one story tall and occupy less than 1,000 square feet, with an exterior that mixes glass, a little brick and wood. It’s also set back the same distance from the street as neighboring houses. Cedar siding on the two-story administration building will be stained Menil gray.

Cassell and Yarinsky also are leading the restoration of the chapel, which in addition to improving the baffle involves “just getting stuff out of the way,” Cassell said.

Added Yarinsky, “It’s about restoring your sense of awe.”

molly.glentzer@chron.com