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Googie: The Architecture of the Space Age · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging out and this is
0:16
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. Are continuing Architecture slash Design Suite Surprising. Yeah,
0:24
Speaker 1: it's surprisingly interesting stuff. Huh. Yeah. And this one, um,
0:28
Speaker 1: I mean listen however you listen, but if you have
0:30
Speaker 1: a choice, I really would urge you to listen to
0:34
Speaker 1: this when you can look at pictures of things. Uh,
0:39
Speaker 1: this one above many many episodes, requires you to look
0:44
Speaker 1: at this stuff as you're listening. Ideally, Yeah, and so
0:48
Speaker 1: if you can do that, do that, yeah, because we're
0:50
Speaker 1: gonna be mentioning specific buildings that you could go check
0:53
Speaker 1: out and be like, oh, this is what they're talking about.
0:55
Speaker 1: We're gonna do our best, but we're going to be
0:57
Speaker 1: describing structures. And it's just way easier to look at
1:00
Speaker 1: the structure. You know, it's got a swoopy pointy thing. Yeah,
1:05
Speaker 1: that's basically it. Olivia was kind of enough to insert
1:09
Speaker 1: hyperlinks into what she sent us. I mean it's super easy.
1:13
Speaker 1: I didn't even have to google the googie and that
1:17
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about. It's not a type of everybody.
1:19
Speaker 1: It's Googy. It's a kind of architecture G O O,
1:22
Speaker 1: G I E UM, And it is basically the architecture
1:26
Speaker 1: that you think of when you think of the nineteen fifties,
1:30
Speaker 1: mid fifties to the very early sixties in America, well,
1:35
Speaker 1: the fifties when they were thinking of the nineties exactly,
1:39
Speaker 1: that's a really good way that might look like. Yeah,
1:42
Speaker 1: and they were way way off, but I mean, how
1:45
Speaker 1: great would the nineties have been if it looked like
1:47
Speaker 1: what they thought it was going to look like in
1:49
Speaker 1: the fifties. I think it would have been pretty cool.
1:51
Speaker 1: Because I am personally a really big fan of Googy architecture.
1:55
Speaker 1: It's nothing like I don't go tour the buildings or
1:57
Speaker 1: anything like that. In fact, there's one in Georgia, and
2:01
Speaker 1: I looked up where that town is and I'm like, no,
2:03
Speaker 1: it's not worth the drive, but I do like looking
2:06
Speaker 1: at pictures of them. I might That bank is three
2:09
Speaker 1: and a half hours from my house, and I want
2:12
Speaker 1: to open up an account there just so I can
2:15
Speaker 1: drive down to that amazing building in the middle of
2:18
Speaker 1: nowhere southeast Georgia. It is really the middle it's not
2:21
Speaker 1: near anything, nothing nowhere around it, but it does have
2:25
Speaker 1: a really fine example of Googy architecture, which we'll get to,
2:28
Speaker 1: which we should probably define beyond it's the architecture that
2:32
Speaker 1: you think of when you think of the fifties or sixties, right,
2:35
Speaker 1: And before we define it, I just want to say
2:37
Speaker 1: that my love affair with Googie started out when I
2:40
Speaker 1: was a kid. When I first honestly, when I first
2:46
Speaker 1: went to Tomorrowland to Disney World, and then when I
2:49
Speaker 1: started watching the Jetsons and being in Georgia, I didn't
2:53
Speaker 1: see any examples of Googy really growing up UM, but
2:58
Speaker 1: took my first trip to l l in nineteen eighty eight,
3:02
Speaker 1: I saw a bunch of Googy. I was like, I
3:05
Speaker 1: love this stuff. And then in the n I took
3:10
Speaker 1: my first trip to New York where I met my
3:12
Speaker 1: friend Bob, and this is was not exterior architecture, but
3:17
Speaker 1: this was that early to mid nineties UM sort of design,
3:20
Speaker 1: like kind of space age bachelor pad design movement that's
3:24
Speaker 1: called Populux. Yeah, and that's sort of akin to Googie.
3:29
Speaker 1: And Bob had his stuff like that, and I thought
3:31
Speaker 1: it was so cool, and he told me about googie.
3:34
Speaker 1: And that's the first time I had heard that word
3:36
Speaker 1: was in That's Hilarious. I heard the word the first time,
3:39
Speaker 1: like this month. I think, well, really well, I mean
3:43
Speaker 1: you don't. You don't hear it a lot, but I
3:45
Speaker 1: think people that know it like to tell other people
3:48
Speaker 1: and name it. And Bob was one of those people
3:51
Speaker 1: because I remember when Google came along when I was
3:54
Speaker 1: living in l A. And I was like, like the
3:56
Speaker 1: architecture and everyone went, huh So, anyway, that's just a
4:00
Speaker 1: long personal preamble. Uh should we define it? I like it. Yeah,
4:05
Speaker 1: let's define it, chuck, have at it, all right. So
4:08
Speaker 1: this was this came about post World War two, and
4:12
Speaker 1: I love how Livia put this. It was influenced by
4:15
Speaker 1: the techno optimism of that era, which was the thing.
4:19
Speaker 1: It was like, Hey, this is it was like Tomorrowland,
4:22
Speaker 1: this is what the future is going to be like.
4:24
Speaker 1: And you know, they're just gonna have like cool shapes
4:27
Speaker 1: and things are gonna look like rocket ships and cars
4:30
Speaker 1: can have these big fins and look like spaceships. And
4:33
Speaker 1: we love neon lights and we love these gentle pas stels.
4:37
Speaker 1: And it was kind of a a populous movement and
4:42
Speaker 1: that it wasn't like just meant for the rich. No,
4:45
Speaker 1: it wasn't for the rich. And as a matter of fact,
4:47
Speaker 1: one of the other big definitions of it is it
4:49
Speaker 1: was a commercial movement. So like you didn't really see
4:53
Speaker 1: anybody's house constructed in Googie, but you would see like
4:57
Speaker 1: a dry cleaner or a bowling alley, or a coffee
5:00
Speaker 1: shop that was a big one, or a diner. Um.
5:02
Speaker 1: So these were places that like any American could go
5:06
Speaker 1: to and did. So it was it was really fun,
5:10
Speaker 1: eye popping, bright colored space age design and architecture for
5:16
Speaker 1: the everyday person. And that's definitely one of the things
5:19
Speaker 1: that made it so lovable. But it's also conversely one
5:22
Speaker 1: of the things that made like architecture critics and like
5:25
Speaker 1: you know, the legitimate I'm making square scare quotes architects
5:30
Speaker 1: hate it because it was populist in nature. Yeah, for sure.
5:34
Speaker 1: UM it emerged in largely state in California. It did.
5:39
Speaker 1: You know, we'll talk about where it did branch out
5:41
Speaker 1: here and there across the US, but it's really a
5:43
Speaker 1: California thing and really a southern California thing, and California
5:48
Speaker 1: at the time really UM did sort of represent the
5:51
Speaker 1: future in a lot of ways. Post World War Two.
5:53
Speaker 1: It was you know, it was the far West, and
5:56
Speaker 1: it was I think a city where people moved to
6:00
Speaker 1: from the East that saw possibilities in California, the land
6:04
Speaker 1: of sunshine, the land of the future. And uh, the
6:09
Speaker 1: the whole idea of this commercial part of it was
6:12
Speaker 1: let's design, let's say a gas station that will really
6:16
Speaker 1: stand out if you're it was a car culture, you know,
6:18
Speaker 1: after World War Two, and let's design something that can
6:21
Speaker 1: really be noticed when you're speeding down the highway. Yeah,
6:24
Speaker 1: that was a really big driving force for Googie. Like
6:27
Speaker 1: if you, um, if you look at a Googie building,
6:30
Speaker 1: you see it like a mile away or many miles
6:32
Speaker 1: away because of the bright colors, because of the weird angles.
6:35
Speaker 1: It really is designed to stand out from its surroundings.
6:39
Speaker 1: A lot of architecture is designed to um complement, blend,
6:44
Speaker 1: kind of be seamless with its surroundings, whether that's nature
6:48
Speaker 1: or existing buildings. Googie did not take that into account
6:51
Speaker 1: at all and actually went the opposite way. And one
6:54
Speaker 1: of the big reasons was because in California as a
6:57
Speaker 1: car culture, to get people's attention as they're speeding past
7:01
Speaker 1: you kind of have to use those design elements. And
7:04
Speaker 1: that was that was basically why Googy came along. That's right.
7:08
Speaker 1: I mentioned the Jetsons and that wasn't just ingest uh,
7:11
Speaker 1: that was a real thing. It was inspired by things
7:14
Speaker 1: like the Jetsons. If you look at the original Hanna
7:18
Speaker 1: Barbera studio building and on Kawanga and West Hollywood, it
7:22
Speaker 1: was a Googie building. Uh. It was sort of Googie
7:24
Speaker 1: meets Art Deco, which Googie has a little bit of
7:28
Speaker 1: its roots in Art Deco in some ways. And also
7:31
Speaker 1: you know, I guess we should talk about some other
7:34
Speaker 1: uh kinds of architecture that it sort of sprang from.
7:38
Speaker 1: Art Deco was one and then one that is also
7:40
Speaker 1: super cool. It's called streamline modern, and that is if
7:45
Speaker 1: you look up any streamline modern building, you might think
7:48
Speaker 1: you're looking at in an ocean liner or something. There
7:52
Speaker 1: are no squared corners on these buildings. Like everything which
7:57
Speaker 1: is also very Art Deco has these beautiful round did edges, yeah,
8:01
Speaker 1: which is really neat. There's also usually structures that kind
8:05
Speaker 1: of suggest like an ocean liners, smoke stacks or something. Um.
8:09
Speaker 1: Sometimes they even put portholes in the buildings like There
8:12
Speaker 1: was a Coca Cola bottling plant that was streamline modern
8:16
Speaker 1: um in the thirties I think maybe forties in l A.
8:19
Speaker 1: And it has straight up portholes on it, like it's
8:21
Speaker 1: meant to look like a ship. And so this idea
8:24
Speaker 1: that you could make something look like something else but
8:27
Speaker 1: also look very elegant definitely kind of found formed part
8:31
Speaker 1: of the foundation for googie architecture. It's very cool. Another
8:35
Speaker 1: thing that influenced it is called programmatic or memetic architecture.
8:41
Speaker 1: This is basically like how you would see it today
8:46
Speaker 1: is if if you like see the hard Rock Hotel
8:48
Speaker 1: in Florida, that it looks like a giant guitar um.
8:51
Speaker 1: It is something that is very intentionally sort of like
8:54
Speaker 1: a gimmick designed to look like something else and not
8:57
Speaker 1: just like but that evokes an airplane. It's no, it
9:00
Speaker 1: looks like an airplane or a giant hot dog or something. Yeah.
9:04
Speaker 1: Very frequently, especially with memetic um, it was like it
9:08
Speaker 1: was the structure was the thing that it was selling.
9:11
Speaker 1: So like you might have an orange juice stand and
9:14
Speaker 1: like the building was a giant orange um yeah, or
9:18
Speaker 1: the brown Oh, it's awesome. I saw pictures of an
9:21
Speaker 1: abandoned one in Florida somewhere. I don't know where it is,
9:23
Speaker 1: but it would be cool to go see um. And
9:25
Speaker 1: then like the brown Derby, the very famous brown Derby
9:28
Speaker 1: restaurant in l A. It's a brown Derby, a brown hat,
9:32
Speaker 1: or like those donut shops that are like a giant donut.
9:36
Speaker 1: That is all memetic architecture. And one of the reasons
9:39
Speaker 1: that that gave rise to Googi is because that's what's
9:42
Speaker 1: called a vulgar vernacular. It's the kind of thing that
9:45
Speaker 1: you don't even need an architect to do. Like the
9:48
Speaker 1: owner of the donut shop could could say, hey, construction guys,
9:51
Speaker 1: I want this to be a donut building for me
9:53
Speaker 1: out of whatever you want to build it out of,
9:55
Speaker 1: and you didn't need an architect at all, And that
9:58
Speaker 1: was a big thing that kind of It was also
10:00
Speaker 1: populous in that respect as well. Yeah, and Googie that
10:04
Speaker 1: was away scale back version of that though, you know,
10:06
Speaker 1: definitely yeah, I mean it would evoke like a rocket ship.
10:08
Speaker 1: But if it was a straight up rocket ship, then
10:10
Speaker 1: that I think it became a medic right. Yeah, definitely
10:14
Speaker 1: transgressing across that line for sure. One of the first
10:18
Speaker 1: Googie Buildings is from nine, which would have put it
10:22
Speaker 1: really on the leading edge of that whole movement um
10:24
Speaker 1: and it's still there. It's it's a great place, like
10:27
Speaker 1: l A is a really great place to drive around
10:29
Speaker 1: and see some of this stuff. It made me miss
10:32
Speaker 1: living there a lot because I would go to some
10:33
Speaker 1: of these places and see some of these places on
10:35
Speaker 1: a daily basis. But Bob's a Big Boy in Burbank
10:38
Speaker 1: in ninety nine designed by Wayne McAllister, who will pop
10:42
Speaker 1: up a couple of times in this episode. Uh, and
10:45
Speaker 1: he built the l Rancho in Las Vegas and Bob's
10:50
Speaker 1: Big Boy in Burbank, which is it's it's really known
10:53
Speaker 1: for its thirty five ft high sign of depicting Bob himself.
10:59
Speaker 1: Is that who it's supposed to be in the red
11:00
Speaker 1: and white checkered overalls. Yeah, there's some connection to Shownees
11:05
Speaker 1: and I never really looked it up, but it's like
11:08
Speaker 1: Showny's Big Boy. That may have just been the franchise
11:10
Speaker 1: name or something. I think so, because in Ohio it
11:12
Speaker 1: was fresh as Big Boy and they all used the
11:14
Speaker 1: same the same big Boy. Yeah, and it was you
11:19
Speaker 1: let's be That's who I aspired to be as a child,
11:22
Speaker 1: get out your overalls. Uh So, Bob's Big Boy is
11:26
Speaker 1: a landmark. Literally. The California Office of Historic Preservation declared
11:31
Speaker 1: it an official historic landmark because they wanted to, of
11:35
Speaker 1: course tear it down, which sadly happened to so many
11:37
Speaker 1: great Googie and other buildings. Yeah, but not Bob's Big
11:41
Speaker 1: Boy in Burbank, which is a lot of bees. And
11:43
Speaker 1: the reason the reason why it's considered the first Googie
11:46
Speaker 1: building is one it was from, but it follows so
11:49
Speaker 1: much of the Googie aesthetic. Like you said, a thirty
11:53
Speaker 1: five ft sign, as attention grabbing as possible, with flashing lights,
11:57
Speaker 1: neon lights, um with giant letters. Usually the building is
12:02
Speaker 1: one story, I believe. With Bob's Big Boy, the roof
12:06
Speaker 1: kind of swoops in different different directions or um they
12:10
Speaker 1: it will go up and then down like in a zigzag.
12:13
Speaker 1: It just the roofs do weird things in a in
12:16
Speaker 1: a Googy structure. And there's a bunch of other things too,
12:19
Speaker 1: like sweeping arches or parabolas, like the original McDonald's had
12:24
Speaker 1: two parabolas on either side. There was the original golden
12:27
Speaker 1: arches I think in in Downey, California. Yeah, that was
12:30
Speaker 1: very googy uh inspired, although I think it was even
12:34
Speaker 1: earlier than than some of these other buildings. I think, uh, yeah,
12:39
Speaker 1: we'll get to that one. I think it's right all right, sure, Yeah.
12:42
Speaker 1: Like I said, roofs can be candelevered up, swept, they
12:45
Speaker 1: can look like curved themselves. They're usually outlined in lights,
12:50
Speaker 1: flashing lights, neon lights. Sometimes it looks kind of spacey,
12:54
Speaker 1: like you said, not exactly a rocket ship, but suggested
12:57
Speaker 1: of it. Um, geometric shape shapes that that suggest motion,
13:02
Speaker 1: like boomerang shapes and starbursts. That's huge too. Um. The
13:06
Speaker 1: fonts that they use are really exaggerated and big and
13:10
Speaker 1: attention grabbing. And um again the signage really really high,
13:15
Speaker 1: really really gaudy, like sometimes many many times taller than
13:19
Speaker 1: the building structure itself. Yeah. So many of the roof
13:23
Speaker 1: Googy roof lines really do seem to defy gravity. And
13:26
Speaker 1: that was kind of one of the points, I think,
13:28
Speaker 1: was to to make people wonder how they built it.
13:31
Speaker 1: And there are buildings in l A And we're going
13:34
Speaker 1: to talk about that gas station in Beverly Hills that
13:37
Speaker 1: um for back then. You know, now they have such
13:40
Speaker 1: lighter and stronger materials but you know, you're talking about
13:42
Speaker 1: building these things a lot of concrete in the nineteen fifties, uh,
13:46
Speaker 1: and some of these roofs that just swoop up and
13:50
Speaker 1: extend to this tiny point, you know, fifty ft above
13:52
Speaker 1: the ground, and you're just wondering how in the world
13:55
Speaker 1: today accomplished this back then, Yeah, that was They just
13:58
Speaker 1: say it's good. That's right. Should we take a break, Yeah,
14:03
Speaker 1: let's take a break. All right, we'll be right back
14:06
Speaker 1: with more. So what's googie anyway? Where they get that name? Oh? Actually,
14:38
Speaker 1: it's named after a specific U cafe that was built
14:41
Speaker 1: the same year as Bob's Big Boy. It's also sometimes
14:44
Speaker 1: considered the first googie uh structure. And the reason why
14:48
Speaker 1: is because the cafe was named Googies. The owner, Mortimer Burton,
14:53
Speaker 1: named it after his wife, whose family nickname was Googie Um.
14:57
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like he said, hey, create a whole
15:00
Speaker 1: new architecture, John Lawtner, and we're going to name it
15:03
Speaker 1: after my wife. He had no saying that. It was
15:06
Speaker 1: just that this Googi's Um coffee shop was a really
15:09
Speaker 1: good early example of this new kind of architecture that
15:13
Speaker 1: was starting to spread in southern California. Yeah. And John
15:17
Speaker 1: Lawtner is one of my favorite architects of all time. Uh.
15:21
Speaker 1: He was a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. Uh. He
15:24
Speaker 1: did most of his work in the south Land there
15:26
Speaker 1: in southern California. Uh. And because the you know, the
15:29
Speaker 1: weather is so great there and the sun is always
15:31
Speaker 1: shining and all the things that people hate about l
15:34
Speaker 1: A that don't live in l A. UM, you can
15:36
Speaker 1: really do big inside out floor plans where the outside
15:41
Speaker 1: is brought in and you've got you can have huge
15:43
Speaker 1: pieces of glass and expose would and it just everything.
15:47
Speaker 1: Weather is so much better out there, So you're really
15:49
Speaker 1: freed up as an architect to do things when you
15:52
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about terrential downpours of rain for
15:56
Speaker 1: many many days of the year and things like that. Uh.
15:59
Speaker 1: And he has built um some some of the great
16:02
Speaker 1: houses in l A, some of the great modern homes. UM.
16:05
Speaker 1: One which I actually is one of my least favorite
16:07
Speaker 1: of his, but maybe the most well known, is the
16:09
Speaker 1: Chemis Sphere House. It's a little too much for me,
16:14
Speaker 1: but I get but I get it. It looks like
16:17
Speaker 1: a spaceship. It's a favorite. It's like it's almost like
16:20
Speaker 1: if Um the eye piece that LeVar Burton wore and
16:25
Speaker 1: Star Trek the next generation was turned into a house
16:28
Speaker 1: and then thrust into the side of a hill cliff,
16:32
Speaker 1: that would be the Chemo spherehouse. Um, my favorite is
16:36
Speaker 1: was made very famous. It's a famous house on its
16:38
Speaker 1: own if you're in architecture. But I was made famous
16:41
Speaker 1: in The Big Lebowski, which is the Sheets Goldstein House,
16:46
Speaker 1: which was Jackie Treehorn's house. So when I started looking
16:49
Speaker 1: at um, I think I just said chemosphere and that's
16:51
Speaker 1: way different the Chemis spherehouse pictures. I was I was
16:54
Speaker 1: wondering if it was that house, and I was like,
16:57
Speaker 1: I don't quite think it is. But it's not surprised
17:00
Speaker 1: in to me that that was from the same architect. Yeah,
17:02
Speaker 1: it's a lot in her house. So just if you
17:04
Speaker 1: have time in your indo architecture, just go check out
17:07
Speaker 1: a bunch of lot in your homes. They're amazing. So
17:09
Speaker 1: he is a really great architect, and like you said,
17:12
Speaker 1: he was a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. That in
17:14
Speaker 1: and of itself automatically made him a serious architect in
17:18
Speaker 1: the architecture world. But he was kind of into Googie
17:22
Speaker 1: as well. He designed that first Googi's Cafe or Googi's
17:26
Speaker 1: Coffee shop in the Googy style, and so it was
17:29
Speaker 1: a criticism of that work of Lautner Googi's Coffee Shop.
17:33
Speaker 1: That guy named Douglas Haskell, who was an architecture critic,
17:37
Speaker 1: wrote wrote an architect or wrote wrote an article in
17:40
Speaker 1: ninety two just like really dripping lee satirical article. UM,
17:45
Speaker 1: kind of the one of those things where you just
17:47
Speaker 1: talk about how great something is, but you're you're discrediting
17:50
Speaker 1: the narrator. So anything they're saying, like all these all
17:53
Speaker 1: this praises actually you know, um veiled criticism or poorly
17:58
Speaker 1: veiled criticism. And he was the one who coined the
18:01
Speaker 1: term Googy to describe the architecture, naming it after that restaurant.
18:05
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. UM, I mean it might as well just
18:09
Speaker 1: say every tenth word in parentheses, I roll right exactly,
18:15
Speaker 1: because he did the very cowardly thing, which is made
18:19
Speaker 1: a fictational character up to explain what Googie. This ficational
18:24
Speaker 1: character in this article was Professor Thrug and it was
18:28
Speaker 1: just it was just dripping with cynicism. Um, you know
18:33
Speaker 1: that he was he was talking about or rather, excuse
18:35
Speaker 1: me thrug. The character was talking about um some of
18:41
Speaker 1: the well, let me just read this bit was saying
18:43
Speaker 1: that um Googi should look both organic and be abstract,
18:47
Speaker 1: featuring abstract mushrooms or a geometric bird, or even better,
18:52
Speaker 1: an abstract mushroom surmounted by an abstract bird. It's kind
18:57
Speaker 1: of hilarious. But one thing he did say is he
19:01
Speaker 1: says that the roof of Googie starts off Googies itself,
19:05
Speaker 1: starts on the level like any other building, but suddenly
19:08
Speaker 1: it breaks for the sky. And he wasn't kidding, Like,
19:11
Speaker 1: if you look up um Googie's uh, the Googies coffee
19:16
Speaker 1: shop on one side of it, the the entire building,
19:19
Speaker 1: not just the roof, but the entire building goes up
19:23
Speaker 1: at an angle like it's on a hinge, and the
19:26
Speaker 1: whole that whole side of the building is is angled
19:29
Speaker 1: like it's gone up. It's nuts. It's the only way
19:31
Speaker 1: you can say it. And so he's he's critical of that, um,
19:35
Speaker 1: but that really weird gravity defying roof and in fact,
19:39
Speaker 1: gravity defying building that became like a trademark part of
19:43
Speaker 1: of Googie. And what's funny is his Lautner was considered
19:46
Speaker 1: serious enough that on the next page, after Douglas Haskell's
19:51
Speaker 1: scathing criticism in in the nine article of House and
19:55
Speaker 1: Home is a profile of Lautner in his work because
19:58
Speaker 1: he's a serious architect and everybody knew it. Yeah, I mean,
20:01
Speaker 1: that's sort of the trick of this thing is. I'm
20:03
Speaker 1: sure the tongue was in cheek and maybe Haskell was
20:07
Speaker 1: just trying to have a little bit of fun and
20:08
Speaker 1: I'm taking it too seriously. Uh, well, it was an
20:12
Speaker 1: obnoxious thing to do. First it was. It was pretty obnoxious.
20:14
Speaker 1: But the takeaway is that they wrote about it, and um,
20:18
Speaker 1: they could have continued to ignore it, but they even
20:21
Speaker 1: said that, um though House and Homes editors would prefer
20:24
Speaker 1: to not go nearly so far as Lawtner does, they
20:28
Speaker 1: believe that serious designer Lawtner should no longer be officially ignored.
20:32
Speaker 1: So you know, we we'll recognize you by making fun
20:35
Speaker 1: of it. It's like House and Home were like the
20:37
Speaker 1: head of a high school click or something, right exactly, So,
20:41
Speaker 1: Lawtner's very much associated with Googie, but he was not
20:45
Speaker 1: the only one. And what's what's also what also makes
20:48
Speaker 1: Googie so populist is that it was decentralized. There were
20:51
Speaker 1: a bunch of different people working in south southern California
20:56
Speaker 1: trying to do the same aime, which was get as
20:58
Speaker 1: many eyeballs onto their customers building to bring that many
21:03
Speaker 1: more people into the customer's business. Because again, it's a
21:06
Speaker 1: commercial architecture movement, and it was totally decentralized, and anybody
21:10
Speaker 1: could push whatever envelope they wanted to. Anything really went. Yeah,
21:14
Speaker 1: the Googie almost had Gookie Houser the Googie. The Googie
21:18
Speaker 1: house movement was much more limited. Uh, it just it
21:21
Speaker 1: doesn't you know, it's kind of cool, but it doesn't
21:23
Speaker 1: fit houses as much as it fits like a bowling alley, Yeah,
21:26
Speaker 1: or even like a dry cleaner, like anything. You could
21:30
Speaker 1: just be like, give me one of those buildings. Yeah. Uh.
21:33
Speaker 1: So there was an architectural firm that was hugely responsible
21:37
Speaker 1: for building a lot of these buildings or designing a
21:39
Speaker 1: lot of them. Uh. And it was our Mette and
21:41
Speaker 1: Davis Open Inn by Eldon Davison, I guess Louis are
21:46
Speaker 1: met and they basically saw a big opportunity in the
21:51
Speaker 1: commercial sector. I think they were industrial designers initially, and
21:56
Speaker 1: they started getting hired to build these buildings and kind
22:00
Speaker 1: of one of the really cool parts of their story is, uh,
22:02
Speaker 1: they hired a junior drafts person named Helen Lou Fong,
22:09
Speaker 1: and this was someone who graduated with a degree in
22:11
Speaker 1: city planning from Berkeley but could only get work as
22:15
Speaker 1: a secretary because she was an Asian woman. And Armatt
22:20
Speaker 1: and Davis gave Helen Fong a chance um as a
22:24
Speaker 1: junior drafts person, and she ended up being kind of
22:27
Speaker 1: one of the sort of central UH influencers. And I
22:32
Speaker 1: used that in the old school use of the term
22:35
Speaker 1: um of that movement. Yeah, I thought that was really
22:38
Speaker 1: cool that they did that too. UM. So one of
22:41
Speaker 1: the first things they in Leash drawn was the Clock
22:43
Speaker 1: restaurant in Westchester, which is there's not that many images
22:47
Speaker 1: of it, um, but yeah, so if you can, if
22:50
Speaker 1: you can find it, it's pretty cool. Like I saw
22:52
Speaker 1: an original sketch that I guess Helen Fong must have done, um,
22:56
Speaker 1: and it's just all sorts of angles in one triangle
22:59
Speaker 1: jutting out of another triangle, and it's it's just a
23:02
Speaker 1: really neat building, Like I can only imagine being like
23:05
Speaker 1: a junior architect and and them saying like, go go
23:09
Speaker 1: nuts like do whatever you want and they're done. I
23:12
Speaker 1: love it. Um so she she that was her first one.
23:15
Speaker 1: Her next one, in the most famous one was Pans
23:18
Speaker 1: Coffee Shop on La ta Hera. Am I saying that
23:21
Speaker 1: right Latierra La Tierrah. I got all fancy um in
23:26
Speaker 1: in l a obviously, Yeah, And that's probably not the
23:30
Speaker 1: technical way to pronounce it, but that's how everyone says it.
23:32
Speaker 1: I think, No, it's I mean, I get it. I'm
23:34
Speaker 1: I'm a prest script no descriptionist. Uh. It was built
23:38
Speaker 1: in nineteen had as again one of those dramatically angled
23:42
Speaker 1: roofs uses a lot of neon and flagstone was a
23:47
Speaker 1: big deal with coffee shops, or a lot of flagstone
23:49
Speaker 1: walls at coffee shops back then, big plate glass windows
23:52
Speaker 1: and a lot of these coffee shops. Uh. And they
23:55
Speaker 1: described it as a place where George Jetson and Fred
23:57
Speaker 1: Flintstone could meet over a cup of coffee. Yeah, because
24:00
Speaker 1: you're using flagstone amidst like four micah and like boomerang
24:04
Speaker 1: and in space imagery. That was a quote from a
24:07
Speaker 1: guy named Alan Hess who's an architecture historian who literally
24:12
Speaker 1: wrote the book not once but twice on googie and
24:15
Speaker 1: actually kicked off a googie preservation movement in the late eighties. Actually,
24:19
Speaker 1: as we'll see, hooray for Hess, right, that's right up
24:23
Speaker 1: with hess uh. They and we you know, we talked
24:26
Speaker 1: a lot about coffee shops. It was actually kind of
24:29
Speaker 1: also called coffee shop modern because there were so many
24:32
Speaker 1: of them. Are Met and Davis and Fong built or
24:36
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, designed more than four thousand of these coffee shops. Right,
24:40
Speaker 1: that's crazy, that's like all the coffee shops. What's funny
24:43
Speaker 1: is if you um there was a an oh bit
24:45
Speaker 1: of Davis. I can't remember when he died, but he
24:48
Speaker 1: he died a very old man. Um and he had
24:51
Speaker 1: said that he didn't really see much of a reason
24:53
Speaker 1: to preserve these these buildings, which I think is a
24:57
Speaker 1: little a little modest because people are saying like these
25:01
Speaker 1: are masterpieces, like they it's just that the architectural world
25:05
Speaker 1: didn't appreciate them. But they're great buildings and people are
25:08
Speaker 1: destroying them. And the reason why is because, as as
25:11
Speaker 1: Davis pointed out, these are commercial buildings. And I saw
25:15
Speaker 1: someone describe commercial buildings as probably the architecture that's under
25:19
Speaker 1: the most pressure to reinvent and reshape itself to keep
25:24
Speaker 1: up with the times. Like, you can't be sentimental with
25:27
Speaker 1: your commercial building. If Googie is out and it went
25:30
Speaker 1: out fairly quick, you gotta scrap it and start over
25:33
Speaker 1: and update, or else you're gonna people are gonna think
25:35
Speaker 1: your building, your business is behind and behind the times
25:38
Speaker 1: and out of touch, and you just can't let that happen,
25:41
Speaker 1: or else you're gonna lose out on business. So he
25:43
Speaker 1: was saying, like, there's you know it was they were
25:45
Speaker 1: commercial buildings, Like what what do you want? Of course
25:48
Speaker 1: people are going to tear them down and replace them
25:49
Speaker 1: with something else. Yeah, I never really thought about that.
25:51
Speaker 1: That's interesting because unless you do something really revolutionary and
25:55
Speaker 1: you you have a you know, Netflix show about your house, Um,
26:00
Speaker 1: you can go out in two and say I want
26:03
Speaker 1: to build a colonial and no one will be like really,
26:05
Speaker 1: I mean it may not be your particular style, but
26:07
Speaker 1: they still build colonial houses and craftsman's and all kinds
26:11
Speaker 1: of houses from all sorts of eras. But I think
26:13
Speaker 1: a commercial building that really makes a lot of sense,
26:17
Speaker 1: Like you can't go out and build a commercial building
26:19
Speaker 1: that looks thirty years old. You might can go out
26:23
Speaker 1: and build something it looks like fifty years old, if
26:25
Speaker 1: it's some kind of cool retro thing. But you can't
26:28
Speaker 1: be anywhere in Besween and build something that looks dated.
26:31
Speaker 1: You know, no, you can't. It can be classic, but
26:34
Speaker 1: it can't be dated. I think that's the fatal flaws
26:36
Speaker 1: dated and and Googy dated itself very quickly, as we'll see.
26:40
Speaker 1: That's right. And then there was Norms too. We mentioned Norms.
26:44
Speaker 1: That was another Hell and Fong classic too, which is
26:48
Speaker 1: just like a great example of Googy architecture. I think
26:51
Speaker 1: Norms is still there too. Yes, I believe it was
26:54
Speaker 1: also designated a Historic and Cultural Monument by the l
26:58
Speaker 1: A City Council. Was it was going to go under
27:01
Speaker 1: the wrecking ball, and they stepped in and said, nope,
27:03
Speaker 1: you're not going to tear down this norm So it
27:05
Speaker 1: is still there and it is an awesome building. It's
27:08
Speaker 1: great on Los Angego right there in Hollywood, like a
27:10
Speaker 1: lot of these buildings are. Uh the Holiday Bowl, this
27:14
Speaker 1: was a really special story. There's a bowling alley on
27:16
Speaker 1: Crenshaw Boulevard in Crenshaw in Los Angeles, and uh Fong
27:22
Speaker 1: designed the interior and there was a bar and they're
27:24
Speaker 1: called Sebeka. Sorry, I bet it was hopping Man. Um.
27:30
Speaker 1: The cool thing about this area at the time was
27:33
Speaker 1: it it was one of the only integrated parts of
27:35
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. The local high school literally had one third
27:40
Speaker 1: African American, one third Asian American, and one third white kids. Yeah,
27:45
Speaker 1: and that was what made the Holiday Bowls so special,
27:48
Speaker 1: as you had these different cultures and groups of people
27:51
Speaker 1: getting together where they didn't do so in most parts
27:55
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles at the time. Uh. And they had
27:58
Speaker 1: not only were they bowling, but there was a cough
28:00
Speaker 1: shop on the premises. And when we keep saying coffee shop,
28:03
Speaker 1: these were coffee shop like the pulp fiction they were.
28:05
Speaker 1: They're like diners basically. Yeah. I saw that they were
28:08
Speaker 1: a step up from diners, but not you know, as
28:11
Speaker 1: as nice as like a regular restaurant. Yeah. Yeah, that's
28:17
Speaker 1: that's a good way to put it. But at the
28:19
Speaker 1: Holiday Bowl Diner, I'm sorry, the Holiday Bowl coffee shop. Uh,
28:23
Speaker 1: they had all kinds of food. They had oudon, they
28:27
Speaker 1: had grits in southern uh, like soul food. They had
28:32
Speaker 1: straight up burgers and fries. I read an article where
28:34
Speaker 1: people were saying like this was you know, the first
28:37
Speaker 1: time they ever had sushi in their life, and this
28:39
Speaker 1: was in the nineties, fifties and early sixties, which was crazy.
28:43
Speaker 1: Um or. I don't know if they had sushi that early,
28:45
Speaker 1: but at least at some point they did. Uh. It
28:47
Speaker 1: was seven place where people could go hang out. They
28:50
Speaker 1: could drink at the Bowling Alley, go to this coffee
28:52
Speaker 1: shop after uh. And it was actually protected during the
28:56
Speaker 1: La Riots and two like residents of Crenshaw lined outside
29:00
Speaker 1: of the holiday bowl so people wouldn't touch it. So um.
29:04
Speaker 1: I saw that it was demolished, but I also saw
29:06
Speaker 1: a picture from three years after it was supposedly demolished,
29:10
Speaker 1: and it was still there. But the coffee shop is
29:13
Speaker 1: now a Starbucks and the Bowling Alley is now a Walgreens.
29:16
Speaker 1: It looks like yeah, So what they did was they
29:18
Speaker 1: did destroy the actual Bowling Alley part and rebuilt it
29:22
Speaker 1: as a Walgreens, but that exterior coffee shop facade is
29:26
Speaker 1: still attached and it is a Starbucks. Yeah, but it's
29:30
Speaker 1: still googy. Yeah. It looks cool. So um. There were
29:34
Speaker 1: some other ones we mentioned. The original or one of
29:36
Speaker 1: the earliest McDonald's from Downey, California nine I think right,
29:43
Speaker 1: low building parable is on either side. Yeah. And that McDonald's,
29:47
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, is in Downey and we talked about
29:50
Speaker 1: it in the McDonald's episode Taco Bell one too. I think,
29:54
Speaker 1: oh really, okay, I thought you were making a joke. No, no,
29:57
Speaker 1: for real, the Taco episode we talked about Taco Bell
30:01
Speaker 1: and like, there are a bunch of ones from Downey, California.
30:05
Speaker 1: But it's an amazing looking restaurant and it's got a
30:09
Speaker 1: it's got a really cool little museum, McDonald's Museum next door,
30:12
Speaker 1: so you can still walk up. It's a it's just
30:15
Speaker 1: a sort of counter not counter. I guess it is
30:18
Speaker 1: counter service, but you can't go in. You know, what
30:20
Speaker 1: do you call those? A walk out, a walk up
30:22
Speaker 1: take out? Sure, any of those? I think someone said
30:25
Speaker 1: they built a finally built a drive through, but I
30:28
Speaker 1: don't think you can dine in. Still boy, they I
30:31
Speaker 1: guess they're the first McDonald's to have a drive through. Then, No,
30:35
Speaker 1: I think more recently built a drive No, it's just teasing, okay.
30:38
Speaker 1: One of the other things you mentioned, the Holiday Bowl
30:40
Speaker 1: and bowling alleys, were just like begging to be made
30:44
Speaker 1: into googie structures. And another good example is the Covina
30:48
Speaker 1: Bowl in Covina, California, which I guess is around Los Angeles,
30:53
Speaker 1: and um, it is, it still remains, It's still there.
30:56
Speaker 1: It's up for grabs exactly what's going to happen to it. Um.
31:00
Speaker 1: But they're they're in talks to somehow preserve some of
31:05
Speaker 1: the facade or structure or sign or something as they
31:08
Speaker 1: redevelop it, I think into condos. But it was divine
31:11
Speaker 1: designed by a firm that created fifty bowling alleys throughout
31:15
Speaker 1: California in the seven years between nine and sixty two.
31:20
Speaker 1: And I mean, I think, actually this is what gave
31:23
Speaker 1: me the idea for this episode, Chuck, because I was
31:25
Speaker 1: looking at old bowling alleys bowling yeah, and I came
31:29
Speaker 1: across the term googie um, because I was like, this
31:32
Speaker 1: is just such a cool looking bowling alley, and sure
31:35
Speaker 1: enough it was googy And it just led to one
31:37
Speaker 1: thing led to another, and here we are, well that
31:41
Speaker 1: Hollywood Star Lanes where the big Lebowskio shot was very googy. Uh.
31:45
Speaker 1: And I was just meant to mention during the Latner segment. Uh,
31:50
Speaker 1: I saw that they just a few years ago one
31:53
Speaker 1: of the Latner homes was up for sale, which is
31:56
Speaker 1: a rarity in and of itself, but it was, and
31:59
Speaker 1: I say, only two and a half million bucks. That's
32:02
Speaker 1: a lot of money for a house, to be sure,
32:04
Speaker 1: But I just thought with l a southern California real
32:08
Speaker 1: estate anyway, and it's this historic building and an historic
32:13
Speaker 1: architect and it's amazing. I thought it would be like
32:16
Speaker 1: twelve million bucks. Yeah, you definitely think that, So, yeah,
32:19
Speaker 1: it was. I was very surprised. I mean it seemed
32:22
Speaker 1: like a steel I didn't have I didn't have the
32:24
Speaker 1: cash on me, but it looked pretty amazing. And we
32:27
Speaker 1: should mention the ship's coffee shops as well, right, those
32:30
Speaker 1: the little tiny three coffee shop chain. Yeah, um, they
32:35
Speaker 1: were kind of boomerang shaped from what I could tell.
32:38
Speaker 1: I couldn't see like a really good picture of those guys,
32:42
Speaker 1: but I thought what was kind of cute is apparently
32:44
Speaker 1: every every location had a toaster on every table. Best
32:48
Speaker 1: idea of all time, except for the liability. Probably the liability,
32:51
Speaker 1: but also like every once in a while there's a
32:53
Speaker 1: crank that would come in and be like, well I
32:55
Speaker 1: want to discount since I have to toast it myself. Man,
32:58
Speaker 1: Because I can think of at that means that there's
33:01
Speaker 1: a possibility I might have been that guy. Just I
33:04
Speaker 1: want to make my own toast and restaurants more than anything.
33:08
Speaker 1: It does seem like a good idea, for sure. It's
33:10
Speaker 1: a very specific thing how people like their toasts made.
33:12
Speaker 1: So I love that idea. But hats off the ships
33:16
Speaker 1: for that one other one too. That's kind of an
33:18
Speaker 1: icon of googie you mentioned before, that Gulf seventies six station.
33:23
Speaker 1: Um that's in Beverly Hills. Uh. And it apparently the
33:28
Speaker 1: design of it, not the Gulf station itself, but the
33:30
Speaker 1: design of this roof. It's um been likened to a
33:33
Speaker 1: flying carpet and it really kind of looks like when
33:36
Speaker 1: it's got some of the most amazing curves I've ever
33:39
Speaker 1: seen that just don't make any sense whatsoever for a roof,
33:44
Speaker 1: but it really looks cool. Um. And once you understand
33:47
Speaker 1: that it was supposed to be part of the l
33:50
Speaker 1: a X Airport, and then you're like, okay, that makes sense.
33:53
Speaker 1: But apparently it got cut out the design. But the
33:56
Speaker 1: designer Jin Wong was like, this is too cool to
33:59
Speaker 1: just not do. Just turn it into a gas station instead.
34:02
Speaker 1: I've gotten gas there. Every I mean I wasn't in
34:04
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills much, but I tried to get gas there
34:08
Speaker 1: when I could. It's at Crescent Drive and Little Santa
34:10
Speaker 1: Monica Bolivard in Beverly Hills, and it is a very
34:13
Speaker 1: very cool gas station. I shot at one of these
34:18
Speaker 1: out in the desert, which I guess leads no, no,
34:22
Speaker 1: no, no no no. We we shot a TV commercial at
34:24
Speaker 1: one roadside gas stations, like a Root sixty six type
34:28
Speaker 1: of deal out in the middle of nowhere. That looking
34:31
Speaker 1: back was super googie um. And that leads us to
34:34
Speaker 1: a break, because we're gonna come back and talk about
34:37
Speaker 1: the desert and Las Vegas. Okay, Chuck, you set us
35:09
Speaker 1: up maybe better than we've ever been set up before.
35:12
Speaker 1: And if you've been sitting here listening to us describe
35:15
Speaker 1: Googie architecture, even going and looking at some of the photos,
35:18
Speaker 1: you might be like, man, this seems really Vegas to me.
35:21
Speaker 1: You would be right about that, because it got exported
35:23
Speaker 1: to Vegas pretty quick and took off like a rocket there,
35:26
Speaker 1: starting with the Sands Uh in nineteen fifty two. It
35:29
Speaker 1: was the first Googie esque structure there because before that
35:34
Speaker 1: it was all like Bolero ties and wagon wheels and
35:37
Speaker 1: then yeah, and then the Sands came along and said,
35:40
Speaker 1: you Hicks, we're gonna start something new where the mafia,
35:43
Speaker 1: where the trend setting is Mafia of all time. We're
35:47
Speaker 1: gonna take you into the space age. Uh. And that
35:50
Speaker 1: Sands was I think you said, built in fifty two.
35:53
Speaker 1: And that brings back Mr Wayne McAlister into the picture,
35:57
Speaker 1: who designed that Bob's Big Boy and her Bank just
36:00
Speaker 1: a few years before that. Uh. And you know, just
36:03
Speaker 1: look up any image of the old Sands casino sign
36:07
Speaker 1: and it had that egg carton grid was really tall.
36:10
Speaker 1: It was like close to sixty ft in the air,
36:13
Speaker 1: very geometric shapes, and the script was super Googy as well.
36:18
Speaker 1: And I think Vegas took notice and said, you know,
36:21
Speaker 1: I don't know who those mob guys are talking to,
36:23
Speaker 1: but uh, they're onto something here. And Googy started popping
36:28
Speaker 1: up everywhere, including probably most famously in that iconic welcome
36:33
Speaker 1: to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. Yeah, that is super Googy.
36:37
Speaker 1: I mean like if you if you're ever talking to
36:39
Speaker 1: somebody about a Googy design and they ask you what
36:42
Speaker 1: you're talking about, to say, the like the designer the
36:44
Speaker 1: lass welcome to Las Vegas sign that's it's it's it's
36:48
Speaker 1: hits basically every chord on that like big exaggerated fonts,
36:54
Speaker 1: different kinds of fonts, they're starbursts, there's geometric shapes, there's
36:57
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different colors. It's it's googie and
37:01
Speaker 1: it's deepest soul it is. It's a great sign um.
37:05
Speaker 1: While I was looking all this stuff up, I was
37:08
Speaker 1: in my head, I was like, wait, I feel like
37:10
Speaker 1: they were old Howard Johnson's motels that were kind of googy.
37:16
Speaker 1: And I looked and I looked, and I couldn't find any.
37:17
Speaker 1: And then finally I did, and sure enough, a handful
37:22
Speaker 1: of those Hojo's from that era had these big, swoopy,
37:26
Speaker 1: pointy triangular roofs that went all the way down to
37:29
Speaker 1: the ground, kind of like an a frame and jutted
37:32
Speaker 1: way out over the roadway. And uh, I knew I
37:35
Speaker 1: had seen those in my past, but I don't. I
37:37
Speaker 1: don't think there's a lot of them. But it just
37:38
Speaker 1: kind of goes to show where how Googi spread um
37:42
Speaker 1: beyond California and Las Vegas. And we're gonna talk about
37:46
Speaker 1: a few more of those places. Yeah, I mean, there's different,
37:49
Speaker 1: It just pops up in some random places, like apparently
37:52
Speaker 1: the northwest side of Chicago was developed later than the
37:54
Speaker 1: rest of it, and it just so happened that googy
37:57
Speaker 1: was having its heyday. So there's some random googie structures.
38:02
Speaker 1: Trim and Tidy Cleaners. Uh, super Dog Pride Cleaners is
38:08
Speaker 1: really cool looking. Um, I think it's I think that's
38:11
Speaker 1: the one that it looks like a It's a giant
38:13
Speaker 1: triangle with the points sticking out street word if I'm
38:16
Speaker 1: not mistaken. Um, it's it's really neat to see. And
38:19
Speaker 1: then the Ohio House Motel is what's called it's like
38:23
Speaker 1: a subset of googie architecture called phony Cologne, like fox
38:28
Speaker 1: Colonial and that awesome of that term. You a funny coloni. Uh,
38:36
Speaker 1: it's gonna be my latest, my newest insult. Um. The
38:40
Speaker 1: wild Woods Resort area of New Jersey has a quite
38:45
Speaker 1: a few googie kind of motels. They would say, uh,
38:49
Speaker 1: they would call it doo wop style because that's sort
38:53
Speaker 1: of the nine fifties rock and roll seen there in
38:55
Speaker 1: the Jersey Shore at the time. But if you look
38:58
Speaker 1: up what the Moray family m O. R. E. Y
39:01
Speaker 1: designed a number of those motels kind of near the
39:04
Speaker 1: Jersey Shore seaside, and they're really cool looking. They're they're
39:07
Speaker 1: not quite as out there and space shippy, but they're
39:11
Speaker 1: definitely googie. Uh. And then there's a newer win I think,
39:14
Speaker 1: you know. Now people are building the occasional kind of
39:18
Speaker 1: modern googie throwback look and the star Lux Hotel there
39:23
Speaker 1: is one pretty great example of that. Yeah. I found
39:25
Speaker 1: a really great website called Modernist Architecture and they have
39:30
Speaker 1: a post from two thousand fifteen called Wildwood the East
39:34
Speaker 1: Coast Capital of Googi I mean doo wop, and it
39:38
Speaker 1: is a comprehensive photo spread of all these googie structures
39:42
Speaker 1: in Wildwood on the Jersey Shore, and it just looks
39:45
Speaker 1: like an amazing place to wander around. But it's googie
39:49
Speaker 1: through and through. I saw that. I think in that
39:51
Speaker 1: blog they said that it's probably the densest concentration of
39:55
Speaker 1: googie architecture left in the country. Yeah, and it kind
39:58
Speaker 1: of fits those seasides to feel, I think, with the
40:01
Speaker 1: pastels and it just sort of all works together, I think. Yeah. Um.
40:06
Speaker 1: There's also some in Phoenix and Tucson. Probably most famous
40:09
Speaker 1: in Phoenix is what used to be called the three
40:12
Speaker 1: hundred bowl a bowling alley again and I read that
40:15
Speaker 1: no one is exactly sure who designed it um, what firm,
40:18
Speaker 1: or what architect designed the three hunder Bull, but is
40:21
Speaker 1: a classic example of of Googy architecture. UM. There's also
40:25
Speaker 1: Paris Laundry and dry cleaning and the Rainbow car wash there.
40:29
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool stuff. These episodes are fun because there's
40:31
Speaker 1: an know there's people all over the country that love
40:34
Speaker 1: their little buildings get shouted out in their towns totally.
40:39
Speaker 1: The Biff Burger Drive and Chain and clear Water this
40:42
Speaker 1: was right in that sort of middle of that era
40:44
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifty six. Lots of Googy inspired stuff there.
40:49
Speaker 1: And then there's a shopping center of the south Gate
40:52
Speaker 1: Shopping Center in Lakeland, Florida, also mid to late fifties.
40:56
Speaker 1: Another great example. Yeah, you gotta look up the Biff
40:58
Speaker 1: Burger Um, Like look up Biff Burger nineteen fifty six.
41:02
Speaker 1: And one of the big Googie things they have is
41:04
Speaker 1: like they're signed, is like different like different geometric structures
41:08
Speaker 1: like separate from one another, and each one like holds
41:10
Speaker 1: a letter or a little message or something. They're all
41:13
Speaker 1: really brightly colored. It's just really cool and neat looking
41:16
Speaker 1: and we mentioned that great. Yeah, those are great signs.
41:18
Speaker 1: I'm looking at them now. Uh, that great bank. And
41:22
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere Georgia and Alma, Georgia, the
41:25
Speaker 1: Alma Exchange Bank, Uh, nineteen sixty six. You really need
41:30
Speaker 1: to look this one up and imagine this in um
41:33
Speaker 1: sort of rural southeastern Georgia between Atlanta and Jacksonville. It
41:38
Speaker 1: is really something else. Uh. And there's a cool place
41:42
Speaker 1: right here, a newer place UM in the Centennial Olympic
41:46
Speaker 1: Park in Atlanta called Googie Burger. And it's open about
41:50
Speaker 1: twelve years ago, in twenty and it's a really cool
41:53
Speaker 1: modern take on a googie style and it's it's awesome.
41:56
Speaker 1: I didn't even know it was there. And then also
41:58
Speaker 1: took one of the other things, you know, we've been
42:00
Speaker 1: talking about, things like dry cleaners and car washes and
42:02
Speaker 1: bowling alleys like it. It appeared in some like legit
42:05
Speaker 1: big structures like the theme building, the Iconic building at
42:10
Speaker 1: l a X that looks like a War of the
42:13
Speaker 1: World's UFO basically on stilts. Um. That is about as
42:18
Speaker 1: googy as it gets. Um that when it's not like
42:21
Speaker 1: a dry cleaners, that's super Googy Building. Yeah, that one,
42:25
Speaker 1: um people probably you might have heard it called the
42:27
Speaker 1: Encounter because it had a restaurant and bar called the
42:30
Speaker 1: Encounter in it, but it is called the Theme Building.
42:32
Speaker 1: And it was there when I was there and open,
42:35
Speaker 1: and you know, it was kind of a fun thing
42:36
Speaker 1: to go and like grab a cocktail before you pick
42:39
Speaker 1: someone up on an airport run and just kind of
42:42
Speaker 1: like drinking that vibe for a half hour or so. Uh,
42:46
Speaker 1: and then it closed in because there was always just
42:52
Speaker 1: a it was right there by the airport, so usually
42:57
Speaker 1: it was airport people, but like, youn't go early enough
43:01
Speaker 1: if you were like flying somewhere just to go to
43:03
Speaker 1: a restaurant outside the airport because it's not you know,
43:07
Speaker 1: you can't check in and then go back out to
43:09
Speaker 1: the Encounter and then going afterward. Like maybe I think
43:12
Speaker 1: once I might have picked someone up that had just
43:14
Speaker 1: come into town who had never been to l A.
43:16
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, the first thing we'll do is go
43:18
Speaker 1: to the Encounter. But it it was it was just
43:20
Speaker 1: sort of had a problem of no one quite new
43:23
Speaker 1: whin to go, right because it was so tied to
43:26
Speaker 1: the airport. You didn't want to go there if you
43:28
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the airport because you didn't
43:30
Speaker 1: want to be in the airport traffic, which is notoriously
43:33
Speaker 1: bad in l A. So it eventually kind of closed
43:36
Speaker 1: down because of this problem in it's pretty sad. Yeah,
43:39
Speaker 1: it is a little sad, but it is super It
43:42
Speaker 1: was a very inconvenient place for sure. What about Tomorrowland
43:46
Speaker 1: that I mentioned Tomorrow and everybody, I don't want to
43:50
Speaker 1: say everybody, but almost everybody's been to either Tomorrowland at
43:53
Speaker 1: Disney World or Disneyland, and it's just like this retro
43:56
Speaker 1: future googie architecture. It was at first, and I didn't
44:00
Speaker 1: know this, but apparently it was originally meant to mimic
44:04
Speaker 1: what what they thought it was gonna look like in
44:06
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Six. Yeah, that funny what the people of
44:09
Speaker 1: nineteen six would look like. Yeah, And you know I
44:13
Speaker 1: took I mentioned not too long ago, I took my
44:15
Speaker 1: first visit to Disney World since I was a kid recently,
44:18
Speaker 1: and um, I was shocked how little things had changed
44:23
Speaker 1: all throughout the park until I sort of stopped to
44:26
Speaker 1: think about it. Because didn't Disney people like they don't
44:28
Speaker 1: want anything different about that particular park. They They're fine
44:32
Speaker 1: with like adding new things, but like, you don't go
44:34
Speaker 1: in and change Tomorrowland and get rid of those creddy
44:38
Speaker 1: race cars in favor of something better. You just leave
44:41
Speaker 1: the people mover. You leave it alone. Yeah, and let's
44:45
Speaker 1: the I agree with that. I think that they should
44:47
Speaker 1: until it falls apart, until the people Mover like falls
44:49
Speaker 1: off of the cable and kills a bunch of people. Well,
44:54
Speaker 1: I think his Disney largely deals in the business of nostalgia, definitely.
44:59
Speaker 1: That's why John Hodgman hates that place. One another way,
45:04
Speaker 1: the t w A Flight Center at jfk uh Aero
45:08
Speaker 1: saran In designed it and it's amazing, so we don't
45:14
Speaker 1: need to say anything else about it. But it was
45:16
Speaker 1: built in ninety two. Just go to the Curbed New
45:19
Speaker 1: York website and search for explore the t w A
45:23
Speaker 1: Terminal um and it will it's this is amazing photo
45:27
Speaker 1: spread from years back from a photographer named Max Twoey
45:31
Speaker 1: who was granted access to this abandoned but totally preserved
45:36
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two. UM Gooey like like terminal for t
45:41
Speaker 1: w A. It's the most amazing thing you'll ever see.
45:45
Speaker 1: It is a googy did I, well, the floor is
45:52
Speaker 1: made of molasses. Well that that Isn't that the same
45:55
Speaker 1: spot that they have now opened the new T D
45:58
Speaker 1: T w A Hotel. Yes, because it was like perfectly preserved.
46:03
Speaker 1: I don't know how they did it, but I think
46:04
Speaker 1: somebody was like, this thing, we can't do anything with this.
46:07
Speaker 1: It's just too amazing. We can't not mention the space
46:10
Speaker 1: Needle in Seattle probably their most favorite. I don't I
46:14
Speaker 1: don't know what Seattle people think of it. I don't
46:15
Speaker 1: know if they're tired of it or what. But it
46:18
Speaker 1: is there, you know, kind of one of their iconic buildings.
46:21
Speaker 1: Just ask Fraser Grain. Uh, it's right there in the
46:24
Speaker 1: skyline and those opening credits. But it was built in
46:27
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one for their worldfare uh, and Seattle Hotel
46:31
Speaker 1: executive named Edward E. Carlson gave it its iconic name,
46:36
Speaker 1: and its chief engineer was a gentleman name John Menascian
46:40
Speaker 1: who actually worked for NASA and designed rocket gantries. Pretty cool. Yeah,
46:46
Speaker 1: I think definitely legitimizes the space needle for sure. So
46:50
Speaker 1: what happened to Googy? Well, like we said, it dated
46:53
Speaker 1: itself and Googie came along technically in nine, but really
46:59
Speaker 1: it started to take off in the mid fifties, say um,
47:02
Speaker 1: And it was based on like like you're saying, techno
47:05
Speaker 1: optimism of the post World War two economic boom um
47:09
Speaker 1: and us getting to space and just trying new technology,
47:12
Speaker 1: and we actually did all that stuff. Like those promises
47:15
Speaker 1: of the future actually came true pretty quick, Like we
47:18
Speaker 1: ended up on the moon in nineteen sixty nine, and
47:21
Speaker 1: once we got there, humanity was like, we've been there,
47:23
Speaker 1: We've done that, and like the whole that techno optimism
47:27
Speaker 1: like kind of faded pretty quickly because it became every
47:31
Speaker 1: day in commonplace, and since Googie was the architecture associated
47:36
Speaker 1: with that that future that now would become everyday in commonplace,
47:39
Speaker 1: it got dated. I think that's kind of sad but
47:42
Speaker 1: also hysterical. Yeah, that like when people walked on the moon,
47:46
Speaker 1: like that next week the dry cleaner sat down with
47:49
Speaker 1: a designer to build their new dry cleaner. Was like
47:51
Speaker 1: they were like, well, what do you want to do?
47:53
Speaker 1: Just build me a dry cleaning Yeah, you know, he
47:55
Speaker 1: was like, I'm ruined. We've been to the moon. Who cares.
48:00
Speaker 1: That's one of Glen clothes. I saw one of the
48:02
Speaker 1: things that really signaled the death knell. Uh. Maybe not earliest,
48:06
Speaker 1: but pretty early on was that McDonald's radically changed its
48:10
Speaker 1: design from parabolas and up swept you know, angular roofs
48:16
Speaker 1: to um houses like a brick house with a mansward roof. Um.
48:21
Speaker 1: That that really iconic seventies and eighties McDonald look um
48:27
Speaker 1: that the whole restaurant style was all the same. Yeah, yeah,
48:29
Speaker 1: it was very close. Although I looked it up. Pizza
48:31
Speaker 1: Hut's roof is different kind it's not a mansward roof
48:34
Speaker 1: like camera, but but yes, it is very similar, and
48:38
Speaker 1: it was meant to evoke home, which is totally different
48:41
Speaker 1: from like a you know, a coffee shop that starts
48:44
Speaker 1: taking up towards the taking off up towards the sky
48:48
Speaker 1: like this. It was a different feel in a different vibe,
48:50
Speaker 1: and it also tied into the ecology movement, right Yeah,
48:54
Speaker 1: I mean I think, you know, uh, one might argue
48:58
Speaker 1: that some of this gooogy stuff is can be wasteful
49:01
Speaker 1: in terms of materials, um to build a roof that extends,
49:05
Speaker 1: you know, sixty feet to a point to the sky
49:08
Speaker 1: when you just need a regular roof. Really, so I
49:10
Speaker 1: think taste sort of we're tamed down a little bit.
49:13
Speaker 1: Um using more uh sort of sensible materials I think
49:18
Speaker 1: played a part, uh, going to the outer space played
49:22
Speaker 1: apart all this stuff, and like you know, sort of
49:24
Speaker 1: any thing that doesn't end up being a classic design,
49:28
Speaker 1: it's gonna come and go, especially one that's kind of
49:32
Speaker 1: radical like this, So you know, it was bound to
49:34
Speaker 1: have its moment and then leave and then be looked
49:37
Speaker 1: back upon with fond eyes years later. Uh. And that's
49:40
Speaker 1: what's happened largely sadly during you know, of course the eighties,
49:45
Speaker 1: a lot of these buildings in l A and the
49:47
Speaker 1: South End were demolished. Um. But towards the end of
49:50
Speaker 1: the eighties, UM, certainly with the publication of the eight
49:54
Speaker 1: six book from Hess Googie Colon fifty Coffee Shop fifties
49:59
Speaker 1: coffee shop arc texture that sort of helped um reignite
50:03
Speaker 1: like an appreciation for these buildings in this architecture, and
50:06
Speaker 1: more and more were protected that had not been demolished. Yeah,
50:09
Speaker 1: and they're still being demolished. I saw that something like
50:11
Speaker 1: a third of them are gone now already, which is
50:14
Speaker 1: really high um as far as demolition goes for a
50:17
Speaker 1: specific kind of architecture. But they are getting protected more
50:20
Speaker 1: and more, which I think is good totally. I saw
50:23
Speaker 1: one other thing that led to the demise of Googie. Um. So,
50:26
Speaker 1: Googie design was meant to attract the eyes of southern
50:30
Speaker 1: California drivers as they were passing by, so that they
50:33
Speaker 1: would turn in and be like, yeah, I could go
50:34
Speaker 1: for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie
50:36
Speaker 1: right or I could get my shirt dry cleaned right now,
50:39
Speaker 1: who knows. So that's what I was designed for. But
50:41
Speaker 1: then in the highway acts started building highways rather than
50:46
Speaker 1: surface streets, so people weren't on the surface streets anymore,
50:49
Speaker 1: and they were going way faster and they were going
50:52
Speaker 1: faster than Googie architecture could catch their attention, and that
50:56
Speaker 1: that was a big part of it too. Yeah. I
50:58
Speaker 1: mean that's uh, as evidence in our sixty six podcast
51:02
Speaker 1: and to bring it for full circle that abandoned Googie
51:06
Speaker 1: gas station on Route sixty six that we shot at,
51:09
Speaker 1: I'll stopping there for gas. It was closed. Yeah, that's true.
51:12
Speaker 1: That's what happens. The highway killed it. High we killed it. Uh,
51:16
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing. If you want
51:19
Speaker 1: to know more about Googie architecture, just go spend some
51:22
Speaker 1: time looking up googie buildings. It's a lot of fun.
51:25
Speaker 1: They're just so colorful. And since I said they're colorful,
51:28
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this
51:33
Speaker 1: what will It will be the first of two Appalachian
51:36
Speaker 1: Trail emails. And by the way, I'm doing the Georgia
51:41
Speaker 1: portion next spring. Oh nice, man, I'm doing it. Me
51:45
Speaker 1: and my friend Eddie and my friend Clay have all
51:48
Speaker 1: dedicated to do it. And so this is not only
51:51
Speaker 1: a personal life goal that I had never accomplished, but
51:55
Speaker 1: a personal fitness goal because I can't go out there
51:58
Speaker 1: right now and do that in the shape and so
52:02
Speaker 1: losing weight it's never worked, like, oh I got that
52:04
Speaker 1: wedding this fall. I need to look good for like
52:07
Speaker 1: that stuff never worked for me. But I can't do
52:10
Speaker 1: this like and be successful without getting in shape, like
52:16
Speaker 1: I will die on the side of a mountain. Right,
52:18
Speaker 1: You really need to read into the Woods because one
52:22
Speaker 1: of the characters is exactly in that same position. All right.
52:25
Speaker 1: So it's a health goal and just a life goal,
52:27
Speaker 1: and we're gonna do it next March. You're going with
52:30
Speaker 1: Eddie as in Eddie the fest Strangler, Eddie, Eddie, I
52:34
Speaker 1: don't know if that's such a good idea. We're gonna
52:37
Speaker 1: start in North Carolina at the border and go sobo
52:40
Speaker 1: to Springer and act like we hiked the whole thing.
52:45
Speaker 1: That's also when we get at the end. So it's
52:49
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Anyway, I've been getting a lot of great
52:51
Speaker 1: emails and true stuff. You should know, fashion unplanned, but
52:55
Speaker 1: very serendipitously. That episode was released on Naked Hike Day. Yeah,
53:00
Speaker 1: we didn't know that was gonna happen, but sometimes it
53:02
Speaker 1: works out that way. Yeah, so this is from this
53:05
Speaker 1: is a really cool and from a man named Arthur Sparrow.
53:09
Speaker 1: Oh she had to put in a pronunciation guide yourssic.
53:13
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna say. Hey guys, a long time listener,
53:18
Speaker 1: and I'm elated about this a T episode because it
53:21
Speaker 1: changed my life. It was the best crazy thing I
53:24
Speaker 1: ever decided to do when I threw hiked it. It's
53:27
Speaker 1: been about a decade battling opioid addiction previous to my
53:30
Speaker 1: through hike in UH and when I left, I knew
53:34
Speaker 1: I needed to change many aspects of my life. I'm
53:38
Speaker 1: a college grad from a good family, had a good job,
53:40
Speaker 1: but I was just self destructing, and the A T
53:42
Speaker 1: changed all that. The community in the trail where everything
53:45
Speaker 1: I needed and helped me, saved my life from a
53:48
Speaker 1: downward spiral when it's supplied hope for me when I
53:51
Speaker 1: needed at most. Uh. Simultaneously, it showed me how much
53:54
Speaker 1: we are truly capable of when we support one another
53:57
Speaker 1: on our journey. Six months and three years later, still
54:00
Speaker 1: opioid free, I started my own business after doing my hike,
54:05
Speaker 1: doing work that I believe in, and now I'm living
54:07
Speaker 1: and loving my journey on and off the trail. I
54:10
Speaker 1: hope there are a few people like myself that hurt
54:12
Speaker 1: your episode and like me, decided to do something crazy
54:14
Speaker 1: and change your lives for the better. It will be
54:16
Speaker 1: the best crazy thing that you ever did, too. I
54:19
Speaker 1: can assure them of that. All the best, gentlemen, keep
54:22
Speaker 1: up the great work. And I got permission from Arthur
54:24
Speaker 1: to read this. Uh. He's the owner and operator of
54:27
Speaker 1: Green Team Junk and UH the way to go. Arthur.
54:32
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I'm so glad that you got it together,
54:35
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that A T was a part of
54:37
Speaker 1: that experience. It's really great. Yeah, congratulations Arthur. That's amazing
54:40
Speaker 1: and thank you for the email. I wonder if Green
54:43
Speaker 1: Team is a reference to that. Will Ferrell and Michael
54:46
Speaker 1: Riley and um Adam McKay, like short, what was that?
54:52
Speaker 1: It was called Green Team. I don't why does that
54:56
Speaker 1: ring a bell because you've seen it. It was, It
54:58
Speaker 1: made the rounds. It was viral like any years ago.
55:00
Speaker 1: Just look up Green Team. It's crazy. And I think
55:03
Speaker 1: he's I think I said he was in the Sacramento area.
55:06
Speaker 1: I'm trying. It looks like it's recycling and we're using
55:09
Speaker 1: uh and hauling away stuff for people. Nice. But that's
55:13
Speaker 1: what I gathered, like green junk removal, right, That's what
55:16
Speaker 1: I figured. I mean, the guy hiked the a T
55:18
Speaker 1: for pize's sake. Yeah, it's not Brown Team junk right. Well,
55:23
Speaker 1: thanks again, Arthur, fantastic congratulations and thanks for writing in.
55:27
Speaker 1: And if you want to be like Arthur and share
55:29
Speaker 1: your personal successes with us, we want to hear them.
55:32
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
55:35
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
55:41
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
55:45
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
55:48
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows,