Posted by Jerry Klein on July 08, 1998 at 11:57:33:
Dear Dr. Liacouris:
I am composing this email aboard a trans-Atlantic flight, returning home from Europe. My wife and I have spent the last two weeks visiting Budapest, Vienna and Prague.
One thing that struck us during our visits was that these wonderful European cities have taken great pains to preserve old buildings. During our travels, we encountered countless buildings that were well over a hundred years old. We even saw some that dated as far back as the 10th century, lovingly preserved and still in use.
We also came across numerous buildings that were in the process of being converted to modern use without destroying their basic structure and without losing their essential history. We saw through open windows that these buildings were being thoroughly renovated inside to meet today's needs. At the same time, the exteriors were being carefully cleaned and restored to preserve the beauty and elegance of their past.
All of this leads me to wonder why the same thing cannot be done with Thomas Hall. Why is it necessary to tear down the oldest remaining single building on the Temple campus, one where Russell Conwell himself preached and which is full of both historical and architectural significance? Why not renovate the interior but leave the exterior standing to reflect the history and tradition of the campus?
With a little imagination, one could find numerous suitable uses for the interior. For example, the church auditorium could be restored to its original beauty and used (as it has been in the past) for music department recitals and theater department productions, and to provide meeting facilities for campus and community groups. The basement could be renovated and put to any number of uses. One that has been proposed which is particularly near to my heart, as a former station manager of WRTI-FM, is a museum devoted to the history of broadcasting and broadcasting education at Temple and in the Philadelphia region. It could also house a new carrier current radio station to revive the tradition of a student-operated station that was ended in 1969 when the original WRTI was silenced. (The current WRTI-FM has been celebrating its 45th anniversary this year, but WRTI-AM predated the FM station by five years. That Temple is not now celebrating the 50th anniversary of WRTI demonstrates that this part of Temple's history and tradition is already in danger of being irrevocably lost.)
As someone who traces his ancestry to the areas that now comprise Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, I was gratified to see so much money and effort being expended to preserve historic structures in those regions. I'm sure you feel the same way about efforts to preserve historic structures in Greece. As members of the Temple family and community, I believe we both should be similarly concerned about preserving historic structures on the university campus.
If you are interested in exploring further the possibilities for preservation and reuse of Thomas Hall, I would be happy to assemble a group of people to discuss it.
I look forward to hearing from you. And I hope you will visit the website that has been created by a group of WRTI alumni to preserve the history of the station. The address is www.wrti.com.
Regards,
Gerhart L. Klein, Esquire
(Jerry Klein)
Temple University - SCAT 1970, Law 1980