Preface:
The purpose of this letter has shifted from when I began to write it. At first, it was an impassioned plea against the plans laid out by Arlington Capital Investors, LLC’s redevelopment proposal, but I have been cheered to learn several new, important pieces of information:
- The demolition of the buildings on either side of the Juliet is motivated not just by the desire for redevelopment, but by one building in bad structural condition and another contaminated by chemicals (neither, I will stress, pose any current danger).
- There are plans already thought out to allow business owners in the buildings slated for demolition to shift their locations to Vassar College-owned buildings while construction is underway, and to shift them back into comparable locations once it has been completed.
- The rather grim renderings produced by Pelli Clarke & Partners showing buildings as little more than concrete blocks are no longer on the table, and other firms of architects are being considered.
If this is all accurate, many—if not most—of my concerns have been addressed. I will, however, keep much of my original letter, by way of laying out the principles which I believe should guide any redevelopment plan and the very real dangers which must not be neglected.
To my neighbors, fellow Vassar students, alumni and all who care about Arlington:
I am taking the time to write this letter in the midst of working on my class finals because something of immense value is at stake. Arlington Capital Investors, LLC’s redevelopment proposal for the heart of Arlington is not just a plan for new buildings—it is a plan that could fundamentally and permanently alter the basic experience of this neighborhood. What follows is a plea for stewardship, for respect for the lived fabric of Arlington as it has existed alongside the College from its founding.
I am just one student.
I do not own property.
I don’t have investors behind me.
I am not even from this side of the country.
But I have lived here for three-and-a-half years. I walk these streets nearly every day. I study here, shop here, read here, live here. I think this gives me the right to speak up for what makes Arlington what it is.
I know there are many who feel concerns like mine are overwrought, premature or pessimistic. But my worries do not come from nowhere. I know what it looks like when a community’s physical world is erased in the name of progress.
Where I am from in California, San Francisco, stands as a testament to continuity. Despite catastrophic earthquakes, fires, and waves of reinvention, the city’s core identity remains legible—a layered, living palimpsest of time. Contrast this with nearby San Jose. In the name of modernization, progress and even “community,” San Jose systematically demolished its historic built environment over the 20th century, despite protests. The result is a city whose pre-1950 architectural world exists only in photographs and faint recollection. The city has an identity, but it is fractured, broken and unrooted. Old buildings survive only as isolated curiosities, swallowed by structures with no dialogue with their surroundings. The continuity between past and present was severed, and severing it inflicted cultural strain.
This is what I fear.
Not change—change is good. Look to San Francisco, to New York City, to countless cities that have reinvented themselves without necessarily erasing themselves. But when the lived physical world is replaced so dramatically that present and past no longer touch, something essential in a community shatters. It can take generations for the pieces to reassemble, if they ever do.
Currently, Arlington is made what it is by the community that lives near and inhabits it, and the longstanding businesses we all have relationships with. I shall speak to my favorite: If you’ve ever stepped inside the Three Arts bookshop, you know immediately that it isn’t like other stores. It feels like time slows down the moment you enter. Books spill from every direction, stacked lovingly. There is history in the air—literally, in the paper and ink of some volumes and prints that have survived longer than many of us have been alive. The Three Arts has existed since 1946. One man has run it in its current space since 1982, and he runs the shop with the care of someone tending a garden. It is quiet. It is intimate. It is exactly the kind of place that vanishes when development pressures arrive, and exactly the kind of place worth fighting for.
Reporting by The Miscellany News describes the experience of long-time business tenants who learned of the redevelopment only after property transfers were completed. Some heard the news secondhand, and the unreliable manner in which it has been spread left others entirely uncertain about their future. Several small business owners were initially told they might relocate within the redeveloped Juliet Building, only to be informed later that this possibility no longer existed.
The emotional toll of such uncertainty is profound. Even if plans exist to take care of this issue, they have not been effectively communicated. A community’s strength lies not only in buildings but in the people who animate them: the booksellers, baristas, shop owners, artisans and residents who form the daily rhythm of Arlington. Any plan that relocates or uproots them must be undertaken with transparency, respect and genuine collaboration. Presently, too many long-standing community members feel unheard and unprotected.
The Juliet Building is one of the most recognizable and historically significant structures in the Arlington commercial district. Its long-standing role as a cultural gathering place has bound generations of Vassar students to the neighborhood. The building represents a shared tradition of film, performance and communal gathering. It is a landmark in the emotional map of this place. Students of the past—including two of my great-aunts—have memories of seeing their first independent films there. Alumni remember dates there. Longtime residents might recall the marquee glowing on winter nights, before it was destroyed. Its architecture, its quiet beauty and its storied past make the Juliet a centerpiece of Arlington’s identity. It matches the visual language of the College in its Tudor forms, touched by the Art Deco period in which it was constructed.
To set the Juliet within a ring of six-floor new buildings as presented in the first (and now outdated) architectural renderings, rising multiple stories above the existing streetscape, would dwarf its modest, human-scaled presence. Not to mention, new construction with little unique architectural identity of its own is not encouraging for the community. A building must be understood as part of an ecosystem of form and light. To envelop the Juliet in towering walls is to erase the meaning and memory embedded in its present context. Arlington has always been a place of small shops and small stories for residents and alumni alike.
While plans indicate that the front portion of the Juliet Theater building will be preserved, part of the rear (encompassing the original theater hall) is slated for demolition to accommodate the new structures. Even a partial demolition carries consequences: The meaningful, architectural whole of the Juliet cannot be preserved by the street-facing façade alone. Such “facadism” is widely considered a poor substitute for genuine preservation. Preservation guidelines stress that historic buildings are more than surfaces—their proportions, materials, spatial relationships and context are what give them meaning.
I understand from college administration that a theater is likely to be included in the new construction, but not utilizing the Juliet in any way. The next best thing to retaining the original theater hall would be to return elements of the building to their original use, even if that requires demolishing the theater hall. I am told that the new theater is likely to be underground. Let the corner of the Juliet serve as entrance and lobby, connecting to a modern theater complex beneath the green space behind it!
There are many buildings on Vassar’s campus that could serve as visual inspiration and tie newer, larger buildings into the history of their proposed location—I think of Jewett House, which tempers scale with Art Deco-Tudor decorative elements, and of the Martha Rivers and E. Bronson Ingram Library, which successfully blends a contemporary feel with the familiar colors, materials and architectural forms that surround it. Blodgett Hall shows how decorative, shaped rooflines and a pitched roof keep a building essentially made up of rectangular segments from feeling severe.
If the new buildings were to:
- Consist of multiple, complex masses rather than one or two large ones;
- Take into account the vernacular architecture of the buildings they replace and buildings on Vassar campus, particularly important are pitched rooves;
- Be styled in different architectural ways to feel natural, rather than as one overwhelming mass;
- Focus on including elements of individual detail;
then I see no reason why they should necessarily not succeed. But above all, development should not feel like displacement. Progress should not require erasure. Only in this manner can the Juliet not feel like a marooned island of history in a concrete jungle.
Longtime residents, students, staff, professors, families, business owners: We (I hope I can count myself among you) all contribute to the life of Arlington. And we all deserve to have a say in the future being shaped around us. Progress that is built upon destruction of cultural memory is not progress—it is loss. And once destroyed, these threads of history cannot be re-woven.
My voice carries neither financial weight nor legal authority. But I hope that, in the aggregate of community concern, this letter might help illuminate what is at stake. Arlington is more than a site for redevelopment: It is a living neighborhood, rich with memory, character, and human presence. It deserves a future that honors—rather than erases—its past.
With hope,
J. Lincoln Dauer, Vassar College Class of 2026 and a Concerned Member of the Arlington–Vassar Community