Dome Detectives

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 9, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The two men sitting in the  lobby of the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center on Lafayette Street talked about R. Buckminster Fuller as though the inventor of the geodesic dome were upstairs taking a nap. Fuller died in 1983.

H.F.W. “Bill” Perk and Cornelius Crane, passengers on Spaceship Earth, were in town to attend a talk around the corner and up North Boulevard at the Old Governor’s Mansion.

From a talk by architectural historian Michael Desmond hosted by The Foundation for Historical Louisiana, Perk and Crane hoped to gain insight into how the Union Tank Car Dome near Alsen was lost.

There is a slightly smaller version of the late Baton Rouge geodesic dome across the river from St. Louis in Wood River, Ill.

Perk and Crane, knights-errant from RBF Dome NFP of Carbondale, Ill., had a pretty good idea what led to Kansas City Southern’s unannounced demolition of one of FHL’s “Treasures in Trouble.” For information on the Richard Buckminster Fuller Dome Not for Profit, go to www.buckysdome.org.

KCS and the FHL differ on what led to the demolition of the dome on Brooklawn Avenue off Scenic Highway Nov. 15 last year.

“Due to flooding, concerns of asbestos and trespassing incidents in the rail yard around the building, the structure had become a public health and safety issue,” read an e-mail from KCS corporate headquarters in Missouri.

After “many attempts” to find “a viable use for the building,” and discussions with “local historical groups,” there was no commitment of “sufficient resources for stabilization of the structure to make it safe,” said the railroad’s spokesman.

FHL’s chairman and the preservation group’s executive director, replying to “225” magazine’s criticism of FHL’s role in the dome’s loss, said KCS “could not hear the benefits of preservation because KCS refused to listen or discuss with preservation advocates any of the benefits of saving (the dome) for the community or the nation.”

Carolyn Bennett, FHL’s executive director, thinks KCS’s decision to tear down the dome was made because FHL was trying to bring local and national attention to the structure.

The railroad’s application to the city for “neighborhood improvement,” a demolition request, calls one of Fuller’s best-known and largest geodesic domes a “steel dome-like enclosed former railroad car shop.”

The Union Tank Car Repair Facility, built north of Baton Rouge in 1958, covered 2.5 acres. Bennett would like to see future neighborhood improvement forms, including a picture of the structure in question, its size and age, be forwarded to the mayor’s office, the Metro Council and the FHL.

When Perk saw no help forthcoming in Carbondale, Ill., he figured out a way to borrow money from his IRA to purchase for $50,000 the dome home of Fuller and wife Anne at 407 S. Forest Ave. in Carbondale. RBF Dome NFP wants to make the dome a museum and memorial to Fuller. Fuller was part of what Perk calls “the brain trust” at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.