The Apex of potential There’s more than meets the eye to Pawtucket’s familiar roadside ziggurat — and it’s well worth preserving BY TIM LEHNERT

DEPENDING ON WHOM you ask, the Apex building next to Interstate 95 in downtown Pawtucket is a sickly eyesore, or a true landmark and an outstanding piece of roadside architecture. The structure is a standard low-slung department store box, upon which six white blocks have been stacked, each one smaller than the one below. The result is a pyramid with an upright trapezoid placed on top, displaying the name "Apex" in red. Constructed in 1969, the Apex building is an example of what Providence designer J Hogue terms "divisive architecture," "Some people hate it vehemently," he says, "while others love it."

Regardless, the future of the well-known ziggurat is in doubt. Currently, the Apex Department Store, a rump of its former retail self since the small chain downsized three years ago, occupies one half of the space, while the state Division of Motor Vehicles rents the other half. The privately owned Teknor Apex Company has not divulged its plans for the store, or the 10-acre slice of Pawtucket riverfront property upon which it sits.

The pyramid-like building’s isolation from the surrounding city emphasizes its novelty, giving it a sense of being marooned. Interstate 95 is on one side, the Blackstone River on the other, and downtown Pawtucket lies across the river. There are several possible futures for Apex: demolition, reconfiguration, or continued use in its current form as the home of a distinctive Rhode Island retailer. Regardless, Apex’s decision will have important implications for the redevelopment of downtown Pawtucket, particularly along its waterfront – and perhaps also for the preservation of local contemporary architecture.

Matt Kierstead, a Pawtucket architectural historian and preservationist who is a fan of the building, suggests that not just the structure’s exterior, but also its conception as "an entire landscape," and its unbroken interior space, make Apex significant. Kierstead places Apex in the context of a mid-century American design ethos that celebrated mobility and expansiveness. Not coincidentally, the building was conceived and built during the age of the convertible, the drive-in, and the space program, and it reflects the optimism of that era. Less well known is how it was devised by Andrew Geller, a key associate of Raymond Loewy, the man considered the father of American industrial design.

For some people, of course, the idea of "preserving" a 35-year-old building is ridiculous, particularly given Rhode Island’s rich stock of much older structures, including some of the stately 19th-century homes located not far across I-95. Kierstead and Hogue argue that the Apex building passes the landmark test, if not officially (short of exceptional circumstances, the National Register of Historic Places does not recognize buildings less than 50 years old), then by virtue of its widespread familiarity. Furthermore, like the demolished 1968 circular Gulf station on Atwells Avenue in downtown Providence (torn down by former mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr. in 2003 to make way for a parking lot), Apex is visually interesting, distinguishing itself from the generic nature of much contemporary retail and commercial architecture.

Apex is part of the Teknor Apex Company, a Pawtucket-based manufacturer that employs 2400 workers, making rubber products, plastics, chemicals, and colorants, in 10 US locations and Singapore. Founded as Apex Tire in 1924 in Providence, the company moved to Pawtucket after the 1938 hurricane, which devastated its Providence operation. Apex opened its first retail outlet, a tire store, in the late 1930s, and inaugurated a full sized department store in Warwick in 1966; additional stores were added in Swansea, Massachusetts, and at the current location in Pawtucket. In 2001, Apex’s days as a modest three-store department store chain ended when the Warwick and Swansea stores were closed, along with the Seekonk warehouse, and the inventory and staff at the Pawtucket flagship was drastically reduced. These closings came with the national decline in regional department stores; Ann & Hope, another important name in Rhode Island retailing, downsized and restructured the same year because of competition from Target and Wal-Mart.

Nowadays, the future of the Apex site in Pawtucket is of interest to private firms, state agencies like the DMV, and government and nonprofit entities devoted to Pawtucket redevelopment. A final group should be added to this list — preservationists interested in conserving the integrity of the building itself. It is from this camp that comes the most intriguing, although perhaps least likely, prospect for the structure: a museum of industrial design. Proponents include not just such unabashed fans as Hogue, the creator of www.artinruins.com, a Web site devoted to local architecture and preservation, and Kierstead, but also Geller’s grandson, Jake Gorst, a Long Island-based Web designer and filmmaker.

In terms of Pawtucket redevelopment, Kierstead suggests, "A museum of industrial design across the river from what is considered the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution [Slater Mill] makes perfect sense." The site’s vast unbroken interior space, he says, and especially its links to the history of American design in Geller and Loewy make it a perfect fit for a museum. Hogue, who notes the site’s proximity to design communities in Providence, Boston, and New York, echoes this view. Yet even though the case for Apex as an industrial design museum is compelling, supporters admit that such talk is currently nothing more than a pipe dream. Moreover, the stalled progress of the Heritage Harbor Museum near downtown Providence could give pause to anyone thinking of developing such an institution.

The future of the Apex building lies in the hands of Andrew Gates, president of Apex at Home, who did not return calls seeking comment. (Similarly, the DMV did not respond to a request for details about its plans.) Although it might seem unlikely that Apex will continue as a retail operation for much longer, it has persisted since being downsized in 2001. The status quo, therefore, appears to be an option, at least for the short to medium term, with the DMV staying put and Apex maintaining its currently feeble brick and mortar presence, in addition to a Web site. For the DMV, the location works well — it is close to the highway, has ample parking, and the ability to accommodate the agency on one floor.

ALTHOUGH APEX and the DMV are under the same roof at the Pawtucket building, one can’t pass from one to the other without going outside and reentering. The DMV side of the structure retains a number of Apex fixtures, shelves, and signs, suggesting that this arrangement — launched when the state leased the space after a flood at the previous DMV location in January 2004 — may be short term.

A dingy banner above the Apex store entrance reads, "Apex at Home OPEN," and another sign provides the Web address, www.apexstores.com, from which mostly household items, as well as coin collectible such as silver dollars and theme quarters, can be ordered. Inside, six shoppers meandered about the lightly stocked space on a recent Tuesday, and three employees, one talking on the phone at the cash register, walked the floor. Apex still sells clothing, as well as small appliances like coffee makers and electric razors, but other areas, including the garden center and home electronics, are empty or closed. Although an employee folding sweaters had no idea how long the current DMV arrangement will last, he noted that Apex’s business had increased since the DMV moved in, as customers waiting to renew a registration or get a license next door sometimes wander over to shop.

The northeast corner of the building, on Main Street near the Blackstone River, has also been transformed. Newport Creamery once operated a location there, but it closed in 2001 when the chain declared bankruptcy. New owners subsequently purchased the Creamery, but the Apex location never reopened, and it now houses the Rhode Island Ciudad de Dios ("City of God") Church.

Although you wouldn’t know it from such pedestrian details, the Apex building has some surprisingly rich elements in its heritage. The structure’s designer, Andrew Geller, best known these days for the innovative beach houses he designed on Long Island’s Hamptons in the 1950s and 1960s, has recently been featured in several books, including Alastair Gordon’s Beach Houses: Andrew Geller (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003) and Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001). Geller, who enjoyed a long and successful career as an architect and designer, was employed in New York by Raymond Loewy from the mid 1940s until 1976, when he struck out on his own. Loewy, known as "the man who shaped America," ran an empire that produced designs not only for houses and offices, but also appliances (the Coldspot refrigerator); transportation (the Studebaker, the Greyhound bus, the interiors of three spaceships); packaging (Lucky Strikes’ cigarettes, the Coke bottle); and logos (Shell, Exxon, the US Postal Service eagle). Geller, whose principal focus was residential and commercial architectural design, was an integral part of the Loewy firm and served for a number of years as its vice president and director of design.