Shaping a century from Minnesota to the Mideast

Quick. Name the Minnesota firm that designed three blocks on Nicollet Mall, was once one of the three largest architecture firms in the United States, has worked with Mayo Clinic since its beginnings and is currently designing three hospitals in the Middle East.

If you stumbled over the answer, don't feel bad. Ellerbe Becket, one of America's architectural workhorses, often flies under the media radar. From humble beginnings in 1909 when St. Paul city inspector Franklin Ellerbe designed the Old Fireside Inn (now home to the Muffuletta restaurant in St. Anthony Park), the architecture and engineering firm has grown to be an international player that ranks seventh-largest in the United States in health care projects.

But only in the last two decades has it shed what Bob DeBruin, president of the Ellerbe Emeritus group, called its "staid, Midwestern image."

And only recently has Ellerbe made a splash on its hometown skyline. The crisp LaSalle Plaza opened at 8th Street and LaSalle Avenue in Minneapolis in 1991. It was followed by the stately U.S. Bancorp Center a block away on Nicollet Mall and the neighboring two blocks, from the downtown Target store to Target Plaza South. Other recent Ellerbe landmarks include the 1999 Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul and the glassy 1997 Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

Also in the late 1990s, the firm won an international competition to design the first skyscraper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The spectacular 984-foot Kingdom Centre, which towers over the low-rise Middle Eastern city of 3 million, became Ellerbe's international calling card.

Ellerbe's stamp at Mayo Clinic

Much closer to home is a century of work for Mayo Clinic. More than any other client, Mayo has defined Ellerbe's history. And Ellerbe has shaped Mayo's facilities, from Rochester to Scottsdale, Ariz., and Jacksonville, Fla. In 1911, while planning the Zumbro Hotel in Rochester, Franklin Ellerbe met Dr. Will Mayo in his office behind the Weber and Judd drugstore and ended up designing the clinic's first diagnostic building -- the world's first private-practice clinic. As the clinic grew, Ellerbe hired more architects to renovate old buildings and build new ones.

After Franklin Ellerbe died unexpectedly in 1921, his son Tom took over, and in 1928 the firm designed the classical Plummer Building, whose decorative bell tower became Mayo's trademark. Even before that, the Mayo cachet had translated into national projects. Ellerbe's 1922 Cleveland Clinic Hospital offered a startling innovation -- private bathrooms.

Tom Ellerbe, a stickler for efficient function, devised hundreds of other innovations, among them the radial, cloverleaf and Y layouts that improved nursing supervision of patients. (When you see a hospital with a round or octagonal tower, think Ellerbe.) The 1963 Fairview Southdale Hospital is a good Twin Cities example of an Ellerbe Y-layout.

"When we were planning Fairview I went to him right away," said Carl Platou, a retired Fairview Hospital executive. "He was a big man, very quiet, very distinguished. He had a great vision for the firm."

Under Tom Ellerbe's leadership came projects for Notre Dame University, the University of California medical system, 3M and the Ochsner Foundation Clinic and Hospital in New Orleans, among hundreds of others.

The flip side of Tom Ellerbe's practical thrust was a distrust of showy design. Jeff Frush, who has been working on both the City Hospital and the University Hospital in Dubai, recalled his job interview with Tom Ellerbe, who asked him, "You're not going to come in and win any awards, are you?"

Ellerbe's functional philosophy fit the decades from the 1950s to the 1980s, when such corporate clients as State Farm Insurance wanted that staid, Midwestern image and institutional clients such as Central High School in St. Paul sought boxy, concrete buildings.

But clients' desires had changed by the late '80s, and a group of Young Turks brought Ellerbe a heightened profile. Those architects included Dennis Walsh, who went on to found his own firm, Walsh Bishop; Rich Varda, now senior vice president of store design at Target Corp.; Bill Chilton, who formed a firm in Connecticut; Scott Berry, and Mic Johnson.

If Tom Ellerbe's design legacy was mainstream, his management style was unusually collaborative. Before he retired in 1970, he transferred ownership of the firm to the employees -- an act that helps account for its unusual longevity. He continued to come into the office and keep watch over his clients until his death in 1987 at age 94.

Bought L.A. firm Welton Becket

In 1988, Ellerbe acquired Welton Becket and Associates of Los Angeles, a design-savvy firm that offered entrée to the faster-growing West and South. In the mid-'90s, the newly minted Ellerbe Becket boasted more than 800 employees and ranked as one of the top three architecture and engineering firms in the United States.

Now steady at 460 after major contractions a decade ago, when large corporate and institutional work dried up, Ellerbe relies on international work for growth and medical work for stability.

"Twenty percent of our work is international; 80 percent is medical," said Mic Johnson, who was heading to the Ellerbe office in Doha, Qatar, to work on a gigantic hospital and clinic project.

Cesar Pelli's firm did the schematic design for the 3-million-square-foot regional medical center in Qatar. Ellerbe designed everything else, including all 7,000 rooms. (Pelli and Ellerbe also collaborated on the 2003 Gonda Building at Mayo.) Another major Ellerbe project, the Samsung Cancer Center, opened in Seoul in 2008. It is Asia's largest cancer center.

True to Tom Ellerbe's legacy, none of these buildings screams "Ellerbe." Be it the Children's Hospital expansion under construction in south Minneapolis or the 1998 Chase Field in Phoenix, which sported the first retractable roof on a stadium, Ellerbe's buildings tend to speak with quiet authority. While boutique firms doing cutting-edge museums and performance halls grab the limelight, the lion's share of architecture is workable buildings for mainstream clients. That territory is, and has been, Ellerbe's forte.

Linda Mack writes regularly about architecture.