Down a gravel road, past barns, a white clapboard Methodist church and flat fields of dark, freshly turned soil, a large brick-and-glass auditorium appears from behind grain silos.
Having worked through remorse, let us briefly address Diva: Harris shows up after lunch in Nashville for an "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" rehearsal at the brick-barnlike Ryman Auditorium, formerly the home of the Grand Ole Opry, preserved from destruction partly through the efforts of Emmylou Harris.
It was a brick Colonial Revival building containing an auditorium, a kitchen, an office for the minister, and a few meeting rooms.
Completed in 1960, it was in harmony with the ethic of the '50s: a long, industrial-style wing of glass block set back on 49th, connected to a romantic undulating auditorium wing of cool gray brick shaped like a guitar.
Last week, just before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, company employees began streaming from their ivy-covered brick buildings up grassy hills to an auditorium, resembling morning chapel at a prep school more than a strategy meeting.
On the first floor is the auditorium, which has exposed walls built with 25,000 bricks salvaged from the old Hope Hall, giving "a lovely poetic sense of continuity", said Tompkins.
There's a lack of touch in the way the dark auditorium, the bright glassy foyers and the old streets of brick and tile come together.
The parish used a two-story house as its chapel and rectory until it scraped together enough money to build a small brick church, followed a few years later by a new school and an auditorium.
I have just climbed the stairs for my interview with Freeman, from the chill auditorium where this is being magicked, as a set designer artfully knocks bricks from just-built walls.
Todd Cohen, editor of the Philanthropy Journal, notes that at the new Hugh McColl Building (called after the chief executive officer of NationsBank) at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler School of Business, nearly every item is named after somebody, from the bricks on the pathway as you enter the building to the seats in the auditorium.
