I have started writing for the online edition of Boston Magazine, and here’s my first piece for the site: a inside look into the books and such that were “banned in Boston” back in the early 20th century.
Enjoy!
I’ve always been interested in the built environment, and when I stumbled upon Professor Louise Mozingo’s recent book Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.
Her work traces the history of places such as Bell Labs, Microsoft, and General Motors, and the book offers great insight into the origins of these somewhat overlooked landscapes. Louise was kind enough to respond to a few of my questions about her work via email.
I’ll be honest: Reading your book on the creation of suburban pastoral capitalist landscapes made me want to drink a gin & tonic and channel a suburban-style “Mad Men” atmosphere in some far-flung office park. What brought you to this topic? You mention a bit of personal experience in the book’s introduction, but was there something else that intrigued you about this project?
It really was as I described at the beginning of the book—an offhand comment about “the American Versailles” that I never forgot. Soon after that I went to work for a firm, POD Inc. that had designed Hacienda Business Park, a quintessential example of a 1980s large scale office park backed by newly available speculative capital provided by the de-regulation of banking and insurance industries. POD Inc. eventually was bought by Sasaki Associates, one of the design firms most well-known for corporate estate projects, the Deere & Company Administrative Center among them. I myself never worked on corporate projects (I focused on public projects and I was there past the peak of corporate work) but they were part of the offices’ history. I realized that they were some of the most substantial landscape architecture projects in the United States in a time of more miserly aspirations in the public sphere. Once I started the research, I realized that the vast majority of suburban scholarship dealt with residential suburbs, ignoring the workplace component of the suburbs. This let me know I had a research tack that could add a distinctive component to suburban history. Lastly, the relationship between postwar corporate managerial capitalism and the advent of pastoral capitalism was a compelling revelation to me. The cultural geographer, J. B. Jackson and his successor at Berkeley, Paul Groth, profoundly influence the way I think about the American landscape. My project makes vivid the relationship between economic and social structures and the built environment, a core idea of Jackson’s and Groth’s work.
That all sounds excessively academic and serious, I realize, but it was the case. (No my father was not a corporate executive, nor my mother a corporate secretary.)
What’s the biggest challenge with such a work in terms of getting rich, first-hand primary sources? Obviously there are diverse sets of corporate records, business reports, and comments from media outlets such as Fortune magazine, but was it possible to garner first-hand recollections from those personally involved with the final decision regarding an urban-to-suburban move for such corporate entities?
I did interview a set of designers who had an inside view of the executive decision-making but the most revealing find was the internal memos about AT&T Bell Labs from the AT&T Archives and the Olmsted Archives at the Library of Congress. You could see the back and forth decisions over ten years (1930-1940) in the formulation of this unprecedented suburban development that is the origin of all the other suburban corporate landscapes. Some of these AT&T memos were pretty spontaneous and unvarnished, not media ready. I also got access to an internal GM memo (not part of their public relations juggernaut) completed just after the opening of the Technical Center that laid out the whole process of the decisions on the Technical Center. There were a couple of oral histories that proved useful as well. Robert Hewitt was still alive when I was working on the book, living in close by Napa, but I had not realized it until I read his obituary in the New York Times. He was the only one of the early executives that was still alive during the writing of the book.
The other thing I need to mention is that during the arc of researching and writing the book, basically 1997-2008, the internet evolved into a whole new kind of research tool for fingertip ready information. It is vastly easier to figure out where personal archives have been housed or how you might be able to interview someone in 2008 than 1997.
In the introduction to your work you note that “If during the next century business as usual continues in the way we build and inhabit cities, the consequences will be dire for many and palpable by all.” I second this, and are there any policy tools that might be adopted to encourage density or at least “smarter” planning throughout or nation’s (sub)urbanized areas?
To briefly summarize, a “smarter” planning policy requires three interrelated strategies to reorganize workplaces within metropolitan regions. First, state and federal governments should stop paying for new highway and extensions that facilitate conversion of agricultural land for development, including corporate offices. For every mile of roads, sewers, transit lines, and water mains in low-density sprawl there are fewer (and these days poorer) supporting taxpayers. Second, suburban jurisdictions that now ask little more of the next corporate campus than an amplitude of parking and roadways to insure the unimpeded flow of automobiles can recognize that these sites have space and their owners have means. While still providing corporations with status, flexibility, and efficiency, the layouts of suburban corporate landscapes can be reshaped to provide pedestrian, bicycle and transit links with adjacent residential development where workers live. Right now, even if as-the-crow-flies distances are reasonable for walking, biking, and transit use, the enclave building pattern of suburban corporate offices forces long and circuitous routes. Not to mention that sidewalks, bike lanes, and transit stops are anomalies in the separatist geography of pastoral capitalism. Add to the mix new public space, a denser diversity of uses, and a reorientation of state and federal subsidies for transit between multiple employment centers and residential districts—not only to and from the downtown—and suburban corporate offices could become a keystone in the reformation of the suburbs. Third, corporations can re-occupy center cities. In the last two decades the public and private governance of cities, like Portland, Oregon have engendered a resurgence of dense center cities through strategic improvements to tried-and-true urban patterns. Dozens of other cities that corporations abandoned in the postwar era have readied their central business districts to become the next Portland. Urban lots, vacant offices, and economic subsidies lie waiting in places like Cleveland, Hartford, Raleigh, and Birmingham that are well served by transit and pedestrian connections, a mix of retail and service uses, and a surprising amount of newly built and renovated housing where workers can live. I stress that all three measures—a halt agricultural land conversion, dispersed employment centers well served by alternative transit, and downtown incentives—need to be in place to make “smarter” planning policy. I am not advocating that the suburbs do not contain employment centers, rather that the suburbs contain dense and connected employment centers.
The intent of many of these massive projects you describe and explore was to move away from the density and diversity of many large cities in the post-WWII period. As we see a return to these center city locations (I think here of the massive pharmaceutical companies near my own apartment in Cambridge) what will became of these suburban behemoths that you talk about in your book?
Some center cities—Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Portland—are showing re-surgence but I want to stress that in most metropolitan areas this is still not the case. Take a train to Hartford, Connecticut and you will see what I mean. Yes, some new downtown housing, probably doing okay in terms of holding on to existing offices, but nothing like the bustle it was in the 1950s, or even the 1960s. That said, there are some suburban behemoths of corporate estates that have been abandoned because of corporate takeovers and consolidation, not because the headquarters moved back downtown. Connecticut General outside Hartford is a good example of what might happen—it got split up and to a certain extent densified and diversified—new housing, a golf resort type hotel, and new office buildings on the former “estate,” the old building saved after outcry from historic preservationists. In this case, split up and diversified but still suburban, still low density if higher than before, still in an enclave pattern.
The tech companies are not coming to San Francisco from the Silicon Valley for instance, though a couple that started in San Francisco, like Twitter, are trying to stay here as they become established companies as opposed to start-ups. What is happening in the Bay Area, where the Silicon Valley economy is still very much on the upswing, is that there is talk of somehow “urbanizing” office parks both to make them denser and to insert some kind of transit and pedestrian connections. This is where the persistence of the enclave pattern is proving so very difficult to supersede.
I think, in general, the office park landscape is still thriving, for the most part—see the Research Triangle Park. And Apple, cash rich is building a classic corporate estate. (I wrote an article for CLOG about this.) So talk of the demise of the suburban corporate landscape is still premature.
People are generally familiar with the term “office park” and all that such a title entails (the good, the bad, the other). In your book you talk about the ur-proto-office park outside of Birmingham, Alabama. Did you happen to visit as part of your research for the book? What did you find?
To my regret, I did not. I figured out that it was the first office park on a last leg of my fieldwork—as a national phenomenon it was hard to get everywhere I wanted to go. I figured it out at the archives of the National Association of Office and Industrial Parks in Reston, Virginia. They fortunately had a good ULI case study on the Office Park, and other early office parks. Since the Jackson Company (developers of the Office park) was one of the founding members of the NAIOP they also had transcripts of speeches by and interviews with executives of the Jackson Company.
A significant challenge in writing the book was just figuring out a chronology of projects and their locations—all the information was scattered. For instance, I only figured out that the Olmsted firm had designed Bell Labs by a tiny newspaper clipping at the New Providence [New Jersey] Historical Society clip file, lovingly saved by a former Bell Lab employee. I knew about the project—it was widely published in the 1940s and 1950s—but not one mention was made of the Olmsted firm. Once I knew that, then I could go to the LOC Archives in Washington—another trip, of course.
To fall back on a bit of a hoary cliche, are we at a tipping point as regards the construction of far-distant suburban office parks and corporate pastoral landscapes that may signal a retrenchment of building far away from recognizable urban cores? Or will gas and or land prices have to go up significantly?
I would like to answer this in two ways.
First, we are not at the point where land and gas prices make this low-density work pattern untenable for employers—but we will be. Getting to work in a car will be too expensive for employees and providing a parking space will be too expensive for employers. There was an interesting study about Cleveland that concluded the an early round of suburban foreclosures happen because of the rising transportation (i.e. gasoline) costs.
Second, one of the points of my book is that pastoral capitalism started as a matter of taste and privilege among the corporate class, not cost effectiveness. I do not think there is any question that the taste and privilege among the leading edge corporate class in the United States is trending urban, hence the huge Lower Manhattan building bought by Google two blocks from the Highline. Google, Facebook, Genentech and others now run what are privatized public transportation systems, mostly comfy, large buses of the type used for excursions, from San Francisco to their suburban offices on the San Francisco Peninsula, and, in the case of Genentech, all the way to Vallejo, half way to Sacramento. They are doing it because the current crop of “brainy youngsters” like the city. I suspect they might be the avant garde in a renewed city and urbanized suburb—but only if they drive a restructuring to benefit the metropolitan region as a whole.
The dystopic scenario in all this is that disconnected, economically declining suburbs become an isolated realms of economic and social disenfranchisement. This is where the public and private governance of metropolitan regions need to make a choice—to reinforce the enclave pattern in both physical and social dimensions inherent in pastoral capitalism or to renew a sense of collective responsibility of building metropolitan systems that serve everyone while serving themselves. The question to ask is there a clean, fast, reliable, and affordable bus line for the people who vacuum and dust the Google offices?
What can you do on Boston’s waterfront? Oh, there’s plenty of wonderful distractions, and here are my suggestions for a day or two out and about during any season.
Enjoy!
On my last visit to Jacksonville to explore the city and give several talks at the library, I got time to sit down with Jim Crooks. We talked about the history of Jacksonville and its transformation over the past century. Jim is a thoughtful and interesting scholar, and I knew I wanted to talk with him about his second book on the city, “Jacksonville After the Fire, 1901-1919: A New South City”.
I put a few questions to Jim about the book via email, and he was kind enough to respond.
I loved the first line of your book: “How do we look at an American southern city like Jacksonville, Florida?” Your work describes a city that has been vastly transformed over the past 90 years. Can you offer the curious traveler a quick thumbnail sketch of the city of Jacksonville in the period in which your book takes place?
Jacksonville in 1900 was a city of 28,000 folk, slightly more than half of whom were African American. It was the largest city in Florida, but smaller than Savannah, Charleston, Augusta, Birmingham, Mobile and Atlanta. It was a small provincial city in a state that in 1900 had the smallest population of any of the former Confederate states. Physically, Jacksonville was bordered on the east and south by the St. Johns River. The river was the reason for Jacksonville’s founding, providing an avenue to the sea to the east, and beyond to other American cities and abroad. The river also was the life line to interior Florida’s agricultural settlements. Jacksonville thus became the commercial center and gateway to Florida. For much of the time since the end of the Civil War, Jacksonville had been the winter tourist capital of the state with fine hotels and restaurants. Like other cities, Jacksonville, though small, had a thriving downtown, affluent suburbs and impoverished slums. It had its parades and festivals, country club and baseball teams. Hemming Park in the center of downtown was the focus for prominent speakers visiting from across the country. Racially segregated for the most part, a small African American middle class had emerged in business, the professions and education. One-third of adult women worked, mostly in low paying jobs. Middle class women had begun to organize themselves, especially in support of public schools which were under funded and poorly performing. Politically white Jacksonville voted Democratic like other Southern whites. Most black Jacksonians were disfranchised, but the few who voted supported Republican candidates.
As you looked into how Jacksonville was transformed after the 1901 fire were there any similarities between how the city rebuilt itself and say a Chicago or even a Seattle after its own devastating conflagration?
The similarities are many. In an era before city planning existed, fire-ravaged cities were re-built much as they had been before. The one exception being that brick frequently replaced wood in construction and some effort was made to insure new buildings were fire-proof. The private sector did most of the re-building and profitting. In Jacksonville and elsewhere, new building was more “modern.” For example the first ten-story sky scrapers were built in the years following the Jacksonville fire. The fires in many cases prompted a new energy in the city. Facing the challenge ahead, locals assisted by newcomers stimulated economic development, suburban growth and downtown vitalization. Clearly a decade after their fires, Jacksonville, Chicago, Baltimore, et. al were bustling cities, greater perhaps than if their fires had not happened at all.
Your book also focuses on the question of race relations and the opportunities (or lack thereof) that Jacksonville presented for its African-American residents. What led James Weldon Johnson to remark that in the 19th century Jacksonville was “a good town for Negroes”, while later it became a “one hundred percent Cracker town”?
In the 1880s when Johnson made the first statement, “a good town for Negroes”, the city had just annexed the predominantly black suburb of LaVilla and blacks with organized labor had elected a Republican city council with 5 black council members, plus a black magistrate. There were black police and fire fighters. Segregation and discrimination existed, but whites generally had a sense of nobless oblige toward blacks, seen in their sponsoring Johnson to pass the bar and become the first African American member in the state. By 1907 when Johnson made the second remark about a “one hundred percent cracker town,” the state had suspended local government replacing black representatives with whites; and passed the white primary and poll tax laws. Blacks were squeezed out of municipal goverment by gerrymandering and simply dismissing fire fighters and police. This shift in attitude reflected similar shifts across the South of voter disfranchisement, the segregation of public accomodations and Jim Crow. The shift reflected a hardening of attitudes by whites influenced by Populist efforts to organized poor white and black voters in the depression 1890s, the manipulation of poor white voters, and the violent attacks against blacks who attempted to vote.
As someone who is keenly interested in transit issues and history how did the average Jacksonville resident get around in this period? Was there an interurban trolley system to nearby towns? And how would you characterize river crossings and the local trolley lines?
River crossing was by ferry or private boat, but few people lived south of the river. South Jacksonville was incorporated separately in 1907 with but 2000 residents. In the city itself, trolley transit existed to the suburbs north, west and southwest. Eventually they were consolidated under the ownership of a Boston trust. For awhile there was an African American owned trolley serving the black community. Jacksonville also in the early years of the 20th century become a rail gateway to Florida with major rail lines connecting the city with Savannah, Atlanta, Pensacola (and west), Gainesville, Tampa and eventually Miami. Men walked (many lived downtown) to work; wealthy men might be driven in a carriage (autos still were a novelty); others took the trolley as did suburban women who travelled downtown to shop. Trolleys were also popular on weekend for outings to parks on the outskirts of the city, often developed by company owners at the end of trolley lines.
Chambers of commerce and other “boosters” (i.e. local officials, etc) have played such a key role in place promotion in American history. How would describe the priorities of Jacksonville’s Chamber of Commerce during this period?
The Chamber, known as the Board of Trade until 1914, played a major role in economic development. For example, it was able to persuade the state legislature to convene for a special session in 1910 to authorize a bond issue for construction of new municipal docks for Jacksonville. The Board/Chamber also led the re-building of the city after the Great Fire of 1901 calling together community leaders (including the mayor and two city council members) to organized the relief and reconstruction. It mediated strikes, supported public education improvements, new hospitals, park development and public health in addition to its support for banking, railroads, insurance and new industry. In my history I call it the premier economic and civic organization of the city.
One often thinks about prominent sports teams defining the character of any city, particularly in the early 21st century. Were there any sports teams (professional or otherwise) in Jacksonville that the citizenry rallied around?
In the early 20th century, major league baseball was in its infancy, pro football barely existed and basketball also had only just begun (for example, Fenway Park in Boston,was built in 1912). Jacksonville high school teams played football and baseball again teams from Gainesville, Tallahassee, Savannah. Major league baseball had just begun spring training, and though Jacksonville was not a site used for spring training, teams played exhibition games locally on the trips north before beginning the season. And these games were quite popular. Tourism had been the major attraction that Jacksonville had for northerners, but the development of resorts further south beginning in the 1890s changed that. During the Florida boom of the 1920s in which Jacksonville participated only marginally, the city was known as the “working city” of Florida, not a tourist attraction.
What sites/places/locales would you recommend to the visitor who would like to see the legacy of the events and transformations that took place in Jacksonville from 1901-1919?
Downtown, a visitor should start at city hall on Hemming Plaza, the building constructed before the First World War as the major department story south of Richmond. It still has some of that grandeur. Downtown has a number of handsome churches built after the Great Fire and a handful of early skyscrapers at the corner of Forsyth and Laura Streets. The original Carnegie Library, now a law office is also worth seeing. Moving west of downtown, is the Ritz Theater, Masonic Temple home to African American business and professional people in that era, the old Stanton High School and Edward Waters College. The southwesterly suburb of Riverside has many handsome old homes from the pre-World War I era, as well as from the interwar era. For specific directions, one might contact the Jacksonville Historical Society whose director organizes tours, or the Riverside Avondale Preservation organization, which was created in 1974.
The ubiquity of trees, like other parts of the landscape, causes some casual wanderers to overlook their presence. This is most decidedly not the case with Leslie Day, a native New Yorker, whose passion for trees extends from the Bald Cypress to the Norway Maple. Recently, she wrote the Field Guides to the Street Trees of New York City, a work which is beautifully illustrated by her friend and colleague, Trudy Smoke. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, the book is a wonderful addition to the vast litany of publications on Gotham City.
Leslie was kind enough to take sometime out of her schedule to reply to a few of my questions via email, and here’s that conversation.
How did this book become a reality? And perhaps I should start by asking what is your personal attraction and fascination with trees?
After my first book, Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City was published, I was interviewed by Ellen Pall for the New York Times in an article she titled “Meet the Neighbors.” She admitted her ignorance regarding the trees that stood outside her building on Riverside Drive and West 83rd Street where she had lived for decades. We walked around the block, Riverside to West End, West End to 84th, 84th from West End to Riverside and back where we started. I talked about the different tree species and helped her figure out how to identify them. When the article came out in October 2007, her human neighbors read it and said “We want to meet the neighbors too!” I knew that if they felt that way there were probably many New Yorkers who had the same need to know about street trees and so the idea for a field guide to the street trees of NYC was born.
In the introduction to the book, you offer short vignettes of people who share your love and wonder of trees. Is there an interesting profile of another individual or organization that you might tell me about it that didn’t make it into the book?
In August 2011 my husband and I moved from our boat at the 79th Street Boat Basin on the Hudson to a 2-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights facing Fort Tryon Park. I am becoming involved with this exquisite park and am so moved by the work the gardeners and volunteers with the Fort Tryon Park Trust do alongside workers from the NYC Parks Department.
Perhaps the most famous literary tree in NYC is the tree that “grows in Brooklyn”. What type of tree was this? Also, are there other trees in NYC that have found themselves featured in other literary works?
The tree that “grows in Brooklyn” was an ailanthus tree, native to China and other parts of Asia and an extremely tough and hardy tree that grows EVERYWHERE in the city! And of course there is the horse chestnut tree that stood outside Anne Frank’s bedroom prison. Seedlings or saplings from the seeds from her tree are being planted at Ground Zero I think.
The book has many wonderful photos that illustrate the tremendous diversity of trees in the five boroughs. Did anyone encounter you and share a tree story with you were out taking photos for the book?
Many people came out into the streets asking me why I was taking photos of their trees. I remember one woman in City Island in the Bronx who said that she was so proud of her trees and the beautiful trees of the island and she was thrilled that they would make it into a book. Another woman in Flushing, Queens invited us into her backyard for a drink of cold water and told us all about her trees and her garden. Almost everyone was thrilled that their trees might make it into a book about New York City street trees.
Many trees are quite beautiful and impressive as they stand amidst their surroundings in such an urban environment like NYC. Do you have a favorite tree “plus” building or structure in terms of context and the contrast such a pairing provides?
I love seeing the trees against brownstones and small townhouses built in the 1800s. These buildings are so beautiful and of such human scale and the trees in front of them in summer give glimpses of the architecture and red and brown sandstone colors and in winter the buildings are a gorgeous background for trunks and bare branches.
You must have a “wish list” for more trees you’d like to see planted around NYC. Any particular favorites and where would you like to see them?
I love that they are planting such a variety of species now with millionTreesNYC. I particularly love the deciduous conifers: the bald cypress and dawn redwood. These trees grow enormously tall and it is a joy to see them in front of schools.
Can you share a few favorite blocks in NYC for “tree-spotting”? And perhaps tell us a bit about what trees we might find there and why they are special or unique?
Where I live now in Washington Heights, there are some amazing trees. On Broadway, between 192nd Street and Bennett Avenue, there is an enormous American elm tree. It is one of the largest trees I’ve ever seen - over 8 stories high and in great health. Along that block are some beautiful red oaks, and then along the inside pathway to the building right before Bennett Avenue is one of the largest linden trees I have ever seen. It must be 10 stories high. I’ll know in the spring whether it is an American linden or a silver linden or a little leaf linden.
I think my favorite tree is an American elm on the northeast corner of Central Park West and 77th Street, right next to the Alexander von Humboldt statue. The photograph of this tree is on page 100 in the book. (Here’s that wonderful tree)
American Elm at 77th and Central Park West
Anything else you’d like to add?
Trudy Smoke and I are giving author/illustrator talks/slideshows and tree walks to all kinds of communities in the city. Recently we spoke to a group of seniors at the Goddard Riverside Community Center. They were enthralled with the discussion, raising their hands, asking questions with each slide. We have met the most wonderful people - all ages, from little children to people in their 90s who are interested in trees and what they do for us and what we need to do for them. Trees make a difference in how you feel inside. In my talk I say that our need for trees, our love of them and our wanting to look out at them where ever we go might just be in our DNA, hidden in each one of our 3 trillion cells. Look who we evolved from and who we share our DNA with - arboreal primates, who need trees for shelter, food, protection from enemies. Trees are home.
Author Leslie Day & Illustrator Trudy Smoke
Much of my professional and personal life is spent thinking about cities. The sight of a curious architectural ornament or an unusual plaque in my travels often sparks a visit to a bookstore or a library to get more details.
It is exhilarating, and whether I’m in San Francisco or Sheffield, I can always find something new to think about in terms of urban planning, architecture, geography, or the broader catch-all category that is sometimes referred to as “urban studies”. Here are a few of the books that always keep me coming back for more, more, more in terms of inspiration, controversy, and communion.
Communitas
by Paul and Percival Goodman
A plea for a humane and human-centered focus to urban planning, this book influenced my own thinking about cities when I first encountered it as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. A decade or so before Jane Jacobs published “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, the Brothers Goodman fired off this salvo that honored and defended the urban condition. Quite a gem, and one that is full of thought bubbles and possibilities.
The Pig and the Skyscraper : Chicago: A History of Our Future
by Marco D’Eramo
With the words “Chicago” and “history” in the title, you’d be forgiven if you thought this was a dry and plodding linear timeline of the Windy City’s greatest hits. This broad critique of capitalism as experienced in Chicago in the past 150 years (think railroads, hog butchering, etc.) is not without its flaws, but it is an engaging read. D’Eramo’s codas to each chapter, including creatively titled sections (i.e. “Market Missionaries Besieged in Fort Science”) are perhaps the most effective portions of this far-ranging work.
The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech
by Irving Lewis Allen
I first encountered this book when it quite literally fell off the shelf at a used bookstore in Tampa. One can quite literally dip into the book at any place and learn a bit about the origins of phrases like “rush hour”, “gold digger”, and “straphanger”. It’s a fun read, and it also left me wondering about the origins of other colorful aphorisms, sayings, and witticisms.
The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seven Through the Tenth Centuries
by Paul Wheatley
The late Paul Wheatley was quite the polymath, and this far-reaching work published after his death is a final testament to his scholarship and his general interest in the question: “How did cities come to be as they are?” This particular book looks at the origins of cities in the Islamic world, and Wheatley weaves together a range of materials to explain and describe these rather fascinating places.
A Guide to Chicago’s Murals
by Mary Lackritz Gray
The art that we see everyday in our walk to work or in as a fleeting glimpse from a car goes largely ignored. When we are presented with art that is surrounded by other Important Works of Art, we perk up and pay attention (paying $20 might have something to do with it as well). This book on Chicago’s murals asks, nay, tells us to pay attention as we make our way around the city. It can be used as a practical guide or a spur to an impromptu trip on the El. These murals have stories, and as a whole, this book presents a good slice of the art that makes the city a more interesting place.
The City of To-Morrow and its Planning
by Le Corbusier
In this introduction to this influential work, Le Corbusier boldly stated that “The city of to-day is a dying thing because it is not geometrical”. When this work was first published in 1929, he did not mince words, and his unswerving belief in efficient and rational town planning was, in some sense, admirable. This brisk and commanding treatise on how the modern city should be built and planned was, as it is now, a bold statement. He was not terribly concerned with how actual humans would make use of these proposed cities, but that was all quite secondary in his manner of thought.
I’m starting a new feature on my site and I’m calling it “Three by Three”.
Three great websites, three great books. That’s it.
The focus? History, geography, planning, architecture, and other things that fall into my roundhouse of urbanology.
I’m going to start with America’s Second City (apologies to my own sometimes home of Chicago)
Here goes nothing, Los Angeles.
Books of Note:
1) The WPA Guide to the City of Angels
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Federal Writers Project sent out-of-work writers and other types scurrying over America to document folkways, foodways, back alleys, shipyards, street corners, and so on. The guide to Los Angeles is by far one of the best documents of the city during this period and it’s fun to take around a walk around Los Angeles.
2) Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City
Conversations about cars and Los Angeles generally turn to how horrible the traffic is on I-10/I-5/fill in the blank. Well, how did things get this way in the first place? Author Scott Bottles does an excellent job looking at the history of urban transportation and the Rise and Rise and Rise of the Automobile in the 20th century. Simply put, it is a read that narrates the history of one key part of the built environment in Los Angeles.
3) Material Dreams: Southern California Through The 1920s
So Kevin Starr’s book about Southern California in the Roaring 20s is about more than Los Angeles proper…but then, hasn’t Los Angeles always been about More Than Just the City Limits of LA? Of course it has. It’s a broad, sprawling, socio-cultu-archi-jazzy-history, with chapter titles like “Boosting Babylon: Planning, Development, and Ballyhoo in Jazz-Age Los Angeles”. It does not disappoint.
Sites of Note:
Who was doing what when and where? These maps produced by the Works Progress Administration answer all of these questions, and as such they are quite a dream for an urban studies type. This wonderful site was created by the USC Digital Library, and with 345 maps, you’ll be back more than once. It’s the kind of thing that might inspire a new hard-boiled Raymond Chandler-esque story, a master’s thesis, or a bit of urban exploration.
2) Los Angeles Daily News Negatives
This is a tremendous collection from UCLA, and it’s got many of the usual (and unusual) suspects: Rose Bowl floats, the “World’s Fastest Man”, and an honest, if depressing, clutch of photographs under the subject heading “Abandoned Children”. There are over 5000 images here, and these are the types of items that bring the richness of the city’s history to life in a fashion that is alternately dramatic and just downright commonplace.
3) Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection
I like to eat. I also like to read about culinary history and the Great Old Restaurants of the Past. So when I heard about this collection, I knew it would make the cut. The dedicated staff members at the Los Angeles Public Library have digitized images from over 6800 menus from around the area and placed them right here. You can search around by keyword, cuisine, and date. Warning: I wouldn’t look at this culinary cornucopia while you’re hungry.
Amidst the urban core of Hartford, Connecticut there is a Whale of a Tale or Two, and this on involves the migration of warmth-seeking people from the Northeast to the fast(er) growing regions of the American Southeast, the wide, wide, world of American professional sports, and of course, a Well-Heeled Team Owner.
This tale begins with the New England Whalers, an upstart professional hockey team that was part of the World Hockey Association. They played their games in Boston starting in 1971, and as hockey is woven into the culture of everyday life in the region for many, it made sense that they were quite popular. In 1974, they moved to Hartford, giving the Nutmeg State its first professional sports team. Apologies are due here to the Hartford Dark Blues, a professional baseball team started in 1875. No one built them a fancy sports arena, so I am omitting them from this discussion.
The Whalers were quite popular, and their home was the Hartford Civic Center for much of their time in the city. For a place that was being knocked about by the forces of industrial relocation (to the American South, then the global South), a declining tax base, and the Other Usual Culprits (middle-class flight, etc.), the Whalers were a beacon of light and something that many in the city could rally around. Of course, it should not be forgotten (and it CAN NOT be forgotten by those know hockey) that Mr. Hockey himself, Gordie Howe, played for the team at the age of 51 in the 1979-1980 season.
There were forces in the air bigger and more powerful than anyone could imagine, and one of them was the National Hockey League’s desire to seek out new markets. And by new markets, I mean places in the United States that were experiencing a bit of a population boom, such as the American Southeast and the Southwest. The other Force of Nature (some in Hartford use other words to describe him) was the new owner Peter Karmanos, who took the helm of the Whalers in 1994. Karmanos had made his fortune by spinning 0’s and 1’s into hundreds of millions of dollars as the head of Compuware, a software company that was to the 20th century as the insurance companies of yore had been (are?) to Hartford in the 19th century.
Compuware was based in Detroit, and Mr. Karmanos did not see fit to pull up his company’s stakes to help move Hartford along into a brave new Knowledge Economy of the early 21st century. After several years, he went around the halls of government in Connecticut asking for a few dollars to help the cause of the Whalers. Specifically, he asked for $147.5 million to help assist in his cause for a New Sports Palace in Hartford. Some refer to this as a “public-private partnership”. I think of it as corporate welfare, but that’s just the cynic in me, perhaps.
The writing was on the wall by the spring of 1997, and in July, Karmanos announced that he would be packing up his harpoons and his team and moving them to Raleigh, North Carolina. Resistance was futile, and many people in Hartford were furious.
Today, the Connecticut Whale (don’t add an “s”, friends) play their games at the Hartford Civic Center, which has now been rebranded the XL Center. What’s the XL stand for? Well, it’s an insurance company. Based in Hartford, the Nerve Center of American Insurance Companies, you ask? No, the XL Group is a financial services company based in Ireland. Chalk another one up to the world of global economic restructuring and related matters, processes, and foibles.
At a recent Whale game, I talked to a few of the Hartford Whaler Faithful, including the president of the Hartford Whalers Booster Club, Marty Evtushek. He showed me around the 1994-1995 pocket Hartford Whalers schedule (cost: $1) and some other bits of memorabilia, including a rather nice Whalers stencil (cost: $3), which I gladly purchased.
After a new pleasantries (I showed off my Hartford Whalers jersey, complete with its 1986 All Star Game Patch to establish some credibility), I asked Marty point-blank: “When will the Whalers return to Hartford?” He didn’t miss a beat, and said “2015”. We talked for a bit about the general lack of support for professional hockey in the Southeast and the renewed Yes We Can spirit in Hartford that seemed to signal a bit of a sea change (insert groan) since the Bad Old Late 1990s.
Certainly the crowd was in good form at the game I was at, and the Whale triumphed over the Adirondack Phantoms, 3 to 0. Could there be a triumphant return of the Whalers to Hartford?
To my mind, it’s more than just a mere possibility.
When you close your eyes and think about Connecticut what comes to mind?
Growing up in Wisconsin and Washington (the state, not the Seat of Power), I did not think about Connecticut much. My first direct and immediate experience with the Constitution/Nutmeg State was when I took my first trip on Amtrak by my lonesome at age 15. After a memorable experience visiting Washington (the Seat of Power), I hopped on a train bound for Boston’s Back Bay Station.
After a flurry of activity at Penn Station, the train proceeded into Connecticut. What I took away from this two-hour jaunt through Connecticut was that the state was a study in contrasts, many of them quite stark. Mystic looked charming and sea-faring, while Bridgeport looked absolutely broken and exhausted. Why?
It took me 21 years, but I finally made it to a place that provides some excellent and thoughtful answers to a few of my questions. I recently spent time in Hartford at the Connecticut Historical Society Museum & Library and I found it to be stimulating in the best possible way.
Like many of Connecticut’s beautiful public libraries, the Society is housed in a building that looks like a charming rustic cottage from the outside. It is, in fact, a Colonial Revival mansion built for the industrialist and inventor Curtis Veeder. His spirit and excitement about industry were not unusual in Hartford during the late 19th century, and he was joined by hundreds, yea thousands, of like-minded individuals during this period of inventive effervescence. I walked in and I hoped for edification, and yea, I was not disappointed.
Yes, there were many historic tavern signs to see, wonderful exhibits of antique furniture, and a well-arranged broad thematic history of the state punctuated by material objects, but I had to get to one part of the museum straight-away: a room at the end of the main hallway where you could dress up marble busts with costumes.
Trivial, you say? In an era of on-demand entertainment, constant hyperactivity (desired or not), museums, libraries, dusty old mansions, and other institutions of the Old School who seek to enter this Vaguely Brave New Millennium must offer some truly hands-on activities. I thought it was great fun to dress up these busts, and I’m 36. I’m sure that the younger set (insert tepid reference to the Young at Heart) find it fantastic as well.
After this fun dress-up session, I wandered into the library. It was a Saturday, so naturally there were a clutch of geneaologists pouring over town records and the like on the large tables. I made a few queries about the status of documents related to the Federal Writers Project work done in Connecticut. The two women working there were most helpful, and I sat down to while away a few minutes with the town history of Milford, Connecticut published in 1939 as part of this ambitious federal initiative. (Spoiler alert: It’s a good read and there are some nice maps. Don’t take my word for it, go ahead and peruse the entire work here.)
Of course, I could not miss their celebrated tavern sign collection. It’s hard to imagine a hand-painted McDonald’s sign (perhaps one exists?), but in the 18th and 19th centuries, such advertisements were a common way to advertise one’s tavern, inn, and so on. This remarkable collection primarily resides on the walls of the Museum’s auditorium, and fortunately a group had just left the room, and a few stragglers were learning about how to evaluate the merits of a rather elaborate dresser. How very New England, I thought. The signs are a true delight, and this one I found to be quite enjoyable.
And what about the origin of the term Nutmegger? Well, there’s a nice bit on that in the Museum, but I don’t want to give everything away…
There are many wonderful maritime destinations in Massachusetts, and here are a few of my favorites. If you have any suggestions, please let me know, as there’s always room for more.
The illustrations for this piece were done by the fabulous Regina Jay, who is one of my former students at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design here in Boston.
Enjoy!