Construction will begin early next year on the African American Cultural Center, at the corner of Liberty Avenue and 10th Street. The designer is San Francisco architect Allison Williams. Click photo for larger image.

The design of the African American Cultural Center has changed in some subtle but important ways since its unveiling in July 2003, and not always for the better.

Five historic commercial buildings came down last month to make way for the center at Liberty Avenue and 10th Street, and construction is expected to begin in the first quarter of next year, with the opening set for fall 2007.

The most distinctive feature of the triangular building, which will house a 500-seat theater, classrooms and galleries, is its three-story metal and glass sail at the corner of 10th and Liberty. The sail, inspired by the Swahili trading ships that carried the culture of East Africa to distant shores, is a potent symbol.

The sail has "power and pride, like a chest pushed out, that will mean certain things to certain people," said its designer, San Francisco architect Allison Williams, two years ago. It also represents "the notion of pushing everything that's different into this environment."

To some, the sail also will represent the ships that carried slaves. But that, too, is part of African-American heritage. The sail acknowledges the manner in which the first African Americans came to this shore and reinvents it as an affirmative image.

In the original scheme, the primary entrance to the building was at the corner of 10th and Liberty, straight through the billowing sail. This was a poetic way of welcoming visitors, a way of announcing that they were about to experience a culture that began in Africa and was exported to and shaped in America.

In the new scheme, there is no entrance through the sail and the main entrance is downplayed and prosaic, just another part of the glass curtain wall on Liberty Avenue, as though one were entering an anonymous office building.

"As the design evolved and spatial relationships inside the building were established, [Liberty Avenue] became more practical as an entrance point," said Neil Barclay, the center's president and chief executive officer. "It wasn't a conscious decision to move it out of there" just for the sake of moving it.

It's a loss, and rubbing salt in the wound is the sail's new base, a flared apron that looks like a cow-catcher.

There have been other changes as the design moved through the "value engineering" stage, in which dreams for buildings are brought in line with the reality of their budgets. The construction cost is pegged at $19.4 million, but Barclay's capital campaign goal is $35.9 million, which also includes the furniture, fixtures and equipment; $6.6 million in site acquisition; $2.5 million in exhibits and opening season performances; and contingency funds to cover the volatile costs of materials. Barclay also is raising a separate $5 million endowment to help fund operating expenses.

Fund-raising is on schedule, he said, and will reach its end-of-the-year goal of $29.7 million.

There will be no underground parking, for which two levels were anticipated. There will be no hotel in the air rights above the building, a possibility two years ago.

"We didn't find a developer who felt they could make the numbers work," Barclay said.

The curtain wall has become flatter and less articulated, and several ground-level, projecting glass boxes along Liberty Avenue, designed as impromptu performance spaces, have been eliminated.

"Not that we won't invite that happening," Barclay said, but most short musical performances will be programmed. "It's not going to be random."

There will be no incorporation of elements of the demolished buildings. That would have been a challenge, but not an impossibility, in so contemporary a building, but there seems to have been no will to do so.

"We did have some conversations with Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation about this, but the ultimate disposition of that was resolved by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which did not require us to save any part of the existing buildings," Barclay said.

Nevertheless, several facade elements of the Zimmerman building were salvaged and may be included in a ground-floor exhibit that will acknowledge the history of the site, which at one time held the second Nixon Theater.

Still being considered is ornamentation of some of the Liberty Avenue facade's opaque, transparent and translucent glass panels with Teenie Harris' historic photographs of Pittsburgh's black community. It's an idea that will distinguish and animate the building and communicate its purpose, and it deserves to survive.

Details of the center's third-floor identification sign still are being resolved, as is the center's official name, perhaps determined by naming rights.

Inside, there has been less emphasis on the notion of creating an "interior street," Barclay said, "but our idea is still that [the first floor] is an open-admission area where people can come and relax without having to go into the theater or gallery spaces." It will have wireless access and house a gift shop and cafe area, which will spill onto the sidewalk in warm weather.

The theater, which occupies much of the building, has expanded, growing from 379 to 500 seats.

"It had always been my goal to maximize the number of seats," Mr. Barclay said, to help lower ticket prices. To accommodate the growth, some back-of-the-house operations will move to the basement, which wouldn't have been possible with an underground garage.

A second-floor education center can be divided into three classrooms or operate as one large space. On the third floor, a large space will be left without a purpose until the center discovers what it needs more of -- gallery, classroom or media room.

As its own building continues to evolve under the guidance of a design oversight committee, the center continues its ambitious program of performances and exhibits in other city locations.