Here’s a view you can’t really see anymore. They’re tearing down most of the Ambassador Hotel in LA. The school district plans to build a new 4000-student high school which will integrate some parts of the old hotel, but not all. The famed Coconut Grove nightclub will be restored and will serve as the school’s auditorium, while the old coffee shop will be a teacher’s lounge, but most of the structure will be removed and replaced with new construction designed to “suggest” the appearance of the former occupant…

There was something of an uproar over the demolition of the Ambassador. Architecture aside, it was also the site of Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. It’s no secret that yer humble host is a fan of old buildings, but in reality, what could they have done with this one? A big hotel building of this sort isn’t useful as much other than a big hotel building, and if a hotel were really essential at this spot, the Ambassador would probably still be one…

I love this building and I’m really sorry to see it go, much like I was sad to see Carolina Circle Mall in Greensboro go. But there’s almost no realistic way to adapt massive structures like these once they’ve outlived their original puropse. And even if there were a way (usually involving an astronomical public subsidy), the buildings would have to be so significantly altered that there would be little if any historical context left anyway…

I have a similar problem with the “restoration” of Charlotte’s Carolina Theatre. The auditorium has been gutted, the lobby and all surrounding structures have been demolished, and frankly, I question whether there’s enough left there to make it worth the investment to “save”, particularly when that investment is financed through tax dollars…

It’s much more prudent to talk about “adaptive reuse” when it involves buildings that can actually BE adapted for some useful and in-demand purpose. That’s one of the reasons I’m a big fan of Jane Jacobs stern rebuke of the “make no small plans” method of urban planning, which led to so many urban renewal suberblock monstrosities, most of which will also be impossible to adapt or re-use in the coming years…

Again, adaptive reuse is a great thing in appropriate circumstances and when there’s a demand and realistic use for the sapce. Spending a fortune in public money to build something inapproriate from scratch inside the carcass of a big old building reminds me of stuffing and freeze-drying a dead pet and plopping him down by the fireplace. It’s just a little bit creepy…

Mark sent me sad news today. One of my favorite buidings anywhere is about to be converted into lofts. I’ve been obsessed with the Armstrong Cork Factory since my first visit to Pittsburgh eight years ago. I’m sorry to see it go…

While the capitalist in me is happy to see such a potentially valuable piece of property no longer going to waste, the urban aesthetician (is that even a word?) in me is terribly depressed to know this amazing building is about to be cleaned and sanitized to make cute little hipster condos which will strip away every bit of its character and context…

Oh well. I guess it couldn’t stand forever in that magnificent state of neglect and decay…

A post card from the past…

I remember visiting Underground Atlanta as a child, when my Dad and I would drive down to see my Mom while she was there on business. It was the early 1970s, right after the whole area had been “rediscovered”, and it was still rather a dark, adult-themed restaurant and entertainment center…

It was great in a sort of late 1960s nostalgia-obsessed sort of way which allowed it still to seem just a little seedy on some level despite being brand new on another. I remember there being a lot of that when I was a kid; it’s as if the whole country suddenly became enthralled with the turn of the century. This was the era of Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlors and Victoria Station Restaurants. Supermarkets sprouted faux gas lamps, red flocked wallpaper was suddenly hot again, and every restaurant looked a little like a Victorian San Francisco whorehouse…

Anyway, the old incarnation of Underground Atlanta was too cool to last. By 1980, the area was apparently pretty scary, and MARTA construction didn’t help, but a “new” Underground Atlanta rose (sank?) in 1989. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same. I was horrified when I visited shortly after the renaissance; it was nothing but a big, bright, cheerful mall with a giant Coke bottle at its entrance…

Alas, it had fallen victim to that too common American tendency to take anything cool and interesting and turn it into a “family friendly” theme park version of its former self, eliminating pretty much any of the characteristics — and characters — which made it appealing in the first place. The “new and improved” Times Square is a prime example, although San Francisco is an even better one, since the transformation has happened almost citywide there…

I hope the rebirth of New Orleans doesn’t follow a similar pattern. I’m about 95% certain, though, that it will. It’s amazing the damage that an army of planners and developers armed with millions of tax dollars can do…

As of last Thursday, we have a couch. This is a particularly good thing since random bouts of insomnia have caused both me and my hubby to sleep on it at least one each of the past five nights…

 

Also by way of update, we made a quick road trip to Columbia on Saturday. I’ve always liked Columbia, although I’m not sure I’d ever live there. Moving to South Carolina is a mistake an individual should only make one time in his life, and my time was in 1986…

All the same, though, it’s a picturesque sort of place, what with the 1920s neighborhoods around Five Points and the magical place known as Knox Abbott Drive across the river in Cayce, with its long-forgotten fast food and motel prototypes. Note the picture above, which was a Hardee’s design from the mid-1960s. There weren’t very many of them, but my hometown had one which has since been demolished. Columbia’s still exists. And I’m apparently still one of only two or three people in the world who remember when Hardee’s outlets looked like this…

Or maybe not. I just checked, and there’s finally a picture of one of the damned things on the history page of the Hardee’s website…

It was extra fun, though, that we managed to schedule our trip to coincide with the most intense thunderstorm in recent history, one which even managed to shut down the local paper. We got trapped in a Kroger store watching as some brave souls actually tried to enter their cars despite the fact that the water level in their parking spaces was above the floor board of their cars…

Fun Saturday, all in all, and I enjoyed test driving the new Oldsmobile…

Other random stuff:

• In case you’re bored today: try this or this or even this. Sorry about slipping in that last one, but there are only eight shopping days left…
• Congrats to Sister Betty and all your stairways, by the way. As a fellow Best of the Bay winner (1998), I welcome you to the club, and note with amusement that you don’t live there anymore either…

 

   

Breakfast at Waffle House; the trip was already getting better. Then, we covered Phoenix and assorted suburbs from all angles. It’s amazingly easy to drive in Phoenix; the freeways may be crowded, but even at rush hour, there’s more than enough capacity on the surface streets alone. And it’s all a big grid, so it’s a really easy place to get around…

   

For a variety of reasons, some of which would become apparent later, this was the most photo-intensive day of the trip. As expected, I saw lots of interesting 1960s and 1970s architecture, and surprisingly little which was much older…

  

I’m intrigued by the Uptown area of Phoenix. It’s very close-in, and yet it all seems to have been developed in the past 30 or 40 years. This is an area that — in most cities, even smaller and newer ones — would contain most of the old bungalow neighborhoods and streetcar suburbs from the 1910s and 1920s. Not so in Phoenix; there didn’t even seem to be any evidence that these neighborhoods had once existed and later been bulldozed. Usually, there’s at least a TRACE of something old, but not here. All the same, it also seemed much too large an area to have been a standard urban renewal tract. I don’t quite understand, and we looked without success for a good book on Phoenix history which might have explained it…

  

It being Tuesday, we had our traditional pizza night at a New York-style joint on Camelback and then drove around some more. I finally read the Phoenix paper, which used to be well-known as a quality paper but its now a miserable, Gannett-owned piece of shit. I didn’t know it at this point, but almost every other paper along I-10 is also a miserable, Gannett-owned piece of shit…