Click here for an index of all “Lomo Manifesto” posts. Defining the Lower Modernisms as those categories of design endeavors that are Modernist in style and intent but fall short of the standards of legitimate Modernism begs the question of what the vague and overused term “Modernism” means in this context. As the foregoing definition [...] «Read more»
Although its subject was both populist and endangered, our recent post on the topic of Noyes-pattern Mobil service stations veered into corporate High-Modernist territory through a blurry border-crossing where High and Low meet. Today’s featured project, Taco House at 215 West 8th Street, better reflects the standards of humility to which the Lower Modernisms project [...] «Read more»
I liked the look of this matchbook, with its jaunty, pre-Starbucks mermaid logo and friendly logogram, rendered in orange in a chubby-serifed variant of the Cooper typeface that I used for the Matchbook Delight! logo above. I had to do a little web-browsing to learn the very 1970s story behind this hotel. The “PSA” of [...] «Read more»
The architect and industrial designer, Eliot Noyes, earned his spot on the roster of the Patron Saints of the Lower Modernisms – despite living a classy and tasteful life in the American Northeast rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful, Noyes worked ceaselessly to expand the scope of Modernism in a downward direction. Early in [...] «Read more»
Click here for an index of all “Lomo Manifesto” posts. The Lower Modernisms, to the extent that they represent the lowbrow alternative to High Modernism, are a culturally relevant subject for the same reasons that everything lowbrow is presently in vogue. Hipster culture celebrates working class culture, albeit in detached, ironic, and often offensive and [...] «Read more»
The Erwin Street Commercial Center (ESCC) at 15500 Erwin Street, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, is a diagram building of unexpected rigor and quality. It resembles an architecture student’s design project – specifically, it looks like about three-quarters of my own studio projects, which had a tendency to expose their structural frames and adorn their exteriors [...] «Read more»
The Stardust was an epic work of the Lower Modern, a hotel-casino that exemplified the “Decorated Shed” advocated by Venturi and Scott Brown in Learning from Las Vegas. The graphic elements of this matchbook, rendered in cleverly harmonizing hues with a three-color print process, echo the forms of YESCO’s great 1960s electrographic sign. There are [...] «Read more»
Click here for an index of all “Lomo Manifesto” posts. It was not so long ago that the dominant architectural-historical narrative held that Modernism was dead, succeeded in the evolution of avant-garde movements by something called Postmodernism. During those dark years, the conquering Postmodernist overlords strode the lands like kings. Meanwhile the persecuted Modernists struggled, [...] «Read more»
Behind William Pereira’s 30-story tower at 5900 Wilshire Boulevard stands a much less conspicuous building, its appearance uncommunicative and purpose inscrutable. It might be an exhaust shaft for underground parking, or point of egress from an exit stair, or it might contain an emergency generator. The mystery only enhances the perfection of this specimen of [...] «Read more»
“Lomo Manifesto” is my term for posts on the general theme of “why The Lower Modernisms of Architecture Are Important Enough to Bother Thinking About.” Click here for an index of all “Lomo Manifesto” posts. These posts might get a little shaggy around the edges – rather than refine them to perfection, in the spirit [...] «Read more»
This small chain of Sands Hotels has a nice logo – over a bundle of stripes, a shape like an abstract crown that also brings to mind chefs’ hats and caravan tents. The backside features a bullet list of their hotels with hand-drawn starbursts in place of asterisks. The script of “Sands” contrasts with the [...] «Read more»
Standing at the corner of Tujunga Avenue and Moorpark Street in Studio City/North Hollywood since 1961, Henry’s Tacos is a taco stand in the literal sense of the term – you conduct your transaction standing at a window. The tacos are “gringo” style. The crunchy taco shells are fried prior to filling, like the ones [...] «Read more»
Located at 4501 Rosemead Boulevard in the city of Rosemead is the Bahooka Family Restaurant, a true cultural treasure resembling a tiki bar times ten, filled with fishtanks, and serving ribs and family foods in addition to sugary drinks. Bahooka is at the approach, presumably by more than mere coincidence, to a cluster of apartment [...] «Read more»
After exhausting over the course of the year the better part of Los Angeles County’s Googie coffee shops still in operation, the 2011 Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series came to its logical conclusion on December 17th with the “Zombie Googie” ride, a tour of the extant remains of Googie coffee shops no longer in [...] «Read more»
The date of this matchbook can be narrowed down to between the years 1974, when they began playing Jai Alai at the fronton in the new MGM Grand Hotel, and 1980, when a disastrous fire broke out in the unsprinklered hotel, killing 85 and putting an end to the “fastest game in town.” It has [...] «Read more»
The eye-catching Islander Apartments is at 7000 South La Cienega Boulevard in the city of Inglewood – perhaps you have seen it on your way to the airport. The Islander may be the best, which is to say, possessed of the most densely-packed exuberance, of small apartment buildings in the “Polynesian Gabled” style. Yet another [...] «Read more»
Four hearty riders participated in the November edition of the Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series, traveling some 23 miles through damp and rain to visit Rod’s Grill, at 41 Huntington Drive in the city of Arcadia. Allegedly built in 1956, Rod’s Grill is a fine specimen of the Googie coffee shop and remains in [...] «Read more»
Editor’s Note: Today’s essay is the second contribution to the Lower Modernisms project by Russ Holthouse – his first post was on the topic of Popular Modernism. Russ and I visited the GVCA together on October 30, 2011, and share credit for the photography. I consider the GVCA to be a tremendous find (and please [...] «Read more»
This matchbook looks as though it must be at least 1500 years old, with its edges oxidized like ancient parchment. But do not be fooled, it is all part of the illusion! The letterforms that make up the “CAESARS PALACE” logogram are inspired by Roman inscriptions, i.e., this kind of thing. The characters are made [...] «Read more»
The October installment of the Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series was nominally destined for Cafetales, a Pupusería on La Brea Avenue in Inglewood, but the ride, relatively well attended with 11 riders, expanded into a miniature Tour of Inglewood. This city is a remarkable place for enthusiasts of the Modern. Much of the existing [...] «Read more»
On the gloomy 24th day of September, four participants of the Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series earned their stripes and cruised over to Rae’s Restaurant, at 2901 Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. A humble but righteous little shop, Rae’s was designed by A. L. Collins in the 1950s (1952 according to Googie Redux; 1953 [...] «Read more»
With so few details, the picnic canopy at the Buttonwillow Rest Stop off of northbound Interstate 5 is nearly a perfect building, a mini-Barcelona Pavilion in which Less is More. As conceptually introduced in Lomo post #003, such humble buildings as these, despite the integrity they may possess as modernist design, are ordinarily excluded from [...] «Read more»
The House of Prime Rib, a hella old school establishment in San Francisco, was established in 1949. This matchbook, probably from somewhere around 1970, has a pleasing character. Printed in two colors on a yellow-cream coated card stock, the book features “House of Prime Rib” in Old English lettering in red on a circle configured [...] «Read more»
The August installment of the Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series paid a visit to Bob’s Big Boy in Downey. This location of Bob’s is both a heritage coffee shop and a brand new one, as it was reborn from the carcass of the mostly and illegally demolished Johnie’s Broiler, originally known as Harvey’s Broiler. [...] «Read more»
Part I: Introduction Santa Barbara Plaza is the name of a big mid-Century shopping center in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, designed in 1950 and built out in the years between 1950 and 1965. It occupies a site of about 20 acres in an irregular quadrilateral bounded by Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (which [...] «Read more»
The July edition of the Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series took us straight down La Brea to Chip’s Coffee Shop in the city of Hawthorne. Chip’s was built in 1957 to a design by architect Harry Harrison, and aside from the addition of a patio at its south end, appears to be pretty close [...] «Read more»
Camelot Golfland, located at 3200 East Carpenter Avenue in Anaheim just off of the 91 Freeway, is one of the foremost miniature golf venues in Southern California, and probably the whole world. It features five 18-hole courses, an arcade that looks like a giant castle, an architectural waterslide, and a Lower-Modernist landscape design of overall [...] «Read more»
Thanks to Wikipedia, I have learned that SEITA was the Service d’Exploitation Industrielle des Tabacs et Allumettes – the French national tobacco monopoly. It appears that “Chamois” was a trademark for matches that they distributed. This was among the only foreign matchbooks in the collection I inherited, so evidently the collector was not a frequent [...] «Read more»
The destination for the June Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series was the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant on Riverside Drive in Burbank. The oldest remaining of the Big Boys, it is a fine specimen and nicely preserved. Designed in 1949 by Wayne McAllister, stylistically it is a bit of a hybrid between the “streamline moderne” [...] «Read more»
American fast food restaurant chains hit their major growth spurt in the middle of the century and were a building type intrinsically suited to the Lower Modernist mode. A playful architectural style that was inexpensive, easily replicated and recognizable matched the needs of these restaurants trying to establish the familiarity of their brands and implant [...] «Read more»
Last year while on vacation in Berlin, Carmen and I stopped in at Intershop 2000, a store selling vintage goods from East Germany. The store is named after the East German Intershops, a chain of state-run stores within East Germany that sold goods from the West to those who had access to foreign currency. These [...] «Read more»
At the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Kester Avenue in Sherman Oaks, Mel’s Drive-In (formerly known as Kerry’s) exhibits a striking profile. Having seen it on the street before I knew what it was, I took it at first for a retro reproduction of a Googie coffee shop, only discovering later that it was built [...] «Read more»
The townlet of North Shore, California, is best known as the home of the North Shore Yacht Club, Albert Frey’s 1962 Nautical-Modern building on the Salton Sea. Until last year a derelict and dangerous wreck, this building was quite nicely renovated and reopened in 2010 as the Salton Sea History Museum. Feeling a sense of [...] «Read more»
The dingbat apartment building was the predominant form of multifamily housing constructed in Southern California between 1950 and 1970, a typology that as such probably accounts for the majority of all buildings in Los Angeles that can reasonably be considered to be Lower Modernist – modern in style and intent, but failing to meet the [...] «Read more»
Please pardon the last month’s unintended weblog hiatus. Carmen and I have been busy with the scramble of moving house, to another unit in the cozy Village Green, itself an interesting place but not quite Low enough nor quite Modern enough to be a suitable subject for the Lower Modernisms. Before the LoMos project can [...] «Read more»
On March 26, seven enthusiasts participated in the third Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series, riding the 11 miles from the Village Green to visit the Astro Family Restaurant at 2300 Fletcher Drive in Silver Lake. This coffee shop, formerly known as “Donly’s” and “Conrad’s”, was designed in 1958 by architects Armét and Davis. It [...] «Read more»
I present the first of many Las Vegas casino matchbooks in my collection, this one from the Flamingo, historically the greatest of all the Las Vegas resorts. We can presume this matchbook is no older than 1974, for according to Wikipedia, that was the year in which the Flamingo was renamed “The Flamingo Hilton”. It [...] «Read more»
La Villa Basque is a sprawler, comprising coffee shop, restaurant, bar, and banquet hall in one big boxy building. Named in honor of the Basque heritage of City of Vernon founding father John Leonis, La Villa Basque was built by his grandson, owner Leonis Malburg, next door to the Leonis Malburg Building at the corner [...] «Read more»
On February 19th, the second outing of our 2011 Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series took us to Mel’s Drive-In, formerly known as Ben Frank’s, at 8585 West Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Ben Frank’s was designed by architects Lane and Schlick and built in 1962. In form it follows neither [...] «Read more»
Today’s featured project is the Baldwin Hills Motor Inn, a fine and well preserved specimen of a Lomo style that we shall call The Gourmet Mansardic, located at 3020 South La Brea Avenue near Jefferson Boulevard in Los Angeles. According to the assessor’s records, The B.H.M.I. was built in 1948 with a major addition in [...] «Read more»
May Company was one of the great American department store chains until 2006, when the brand was entirely subsumed by Macy’s. The now extinct May Co. brand will be remembered by architectural historians for its great late-Streamline Moderne store at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, designed by A.C. Martin, which is now a part [...] «Read more»
If there were such a thing as a protypically Lower Modern building, La Brea Liquor might be it, in terms of both building type and style. As I have argued previously, the Lower Modernisms is a plural term because it encompasses a plurality of styles, so there cannot really be one prototype to stand in [...] «Read more»
Editor’s Note: Today’s post, continuing the dialog about the significance of the Lower Modernisms and contextualizing them as a subset of Popular Modernism, was contributed by Russ Holthouse. Russ is a Los Angeles-based architect, a fellow enthusiast and student of Modernism, and an old friend of mine. -JAB I think what you’ve described as “The [...] «Read more»
Today’s installment of Matchbook Delight! features a book from Eaton’s Restaurant and Hotel, formerly of 1150 West Colorado in the city of Arcadia – part of Route 66. A little internet search-engine research helps us find a historic postcard of the Eaton’s site, a sprawling roadside rancho with a googie-izing sign out front and a [...] «Read more»
Kyle Pfister, Garrett Belmont and I, three bicycle-riding architects who live in the Village Green, have undertaken the 2011 Googie Coffee Shops Bicycle Ride Series. Approximately one Saturday per month we will convene a bicycle ride originating at the Green and visiting one of the Southland’s remaining Googie coffee shops; ride distances may vary from [...] «Read more»
The Patron Saints of the Lower Modernisms are those individuals who have lowered the bar for what qualifies for membership in the sanctified realm of Modernism proper, and thereby expanded the domain of what is considered Modernist. I praise them for their efforts and hope they can take such a characterization rightly as a compliment. [...] «Read more»
This post introduces an ongoing series of featured lomo matchbooks to be called, “Matchbook Delight!” Last year I bought a large collection of matchbooks at a yard sale, kept the ones I liked, and gave away the rest. Most of those I kept are from the 1960s and 1970s and are Lower Modernist in style; [...] «Read more»
The gemlike perfection (architecturally speaking) embodied in this little washroom pavilion in the Huntington Beach Central Park comes as a surprise to me, although this perfection might well be overlooked by its users. It is a gratuitously rigorous and refined work of high-modernist architecture, despite its humble program. The expression and detailing strongly convey the [...] «Read more»
Architects love dichotomies, and one dichotomy central to architectural discourse is the distinction between discipline and practice. The practice of architecture involves the everyday dramas of construction contracts, “value engineering,” waterproofing details, and building codes. The Discipline of Architecture, in contrast, involves the high Shakespearean romance: design as an intrinsic ideological Good to be pursued [...] «Read more»
Architecture Burger project AB1006, code-named “The Smartpatrol Blog,” is an effort to investigate, analyze, and define “the Lower Modernisms”. I hope to refine my conception of that term along the way, but here is a working definition of the Lower Modernisms: those categories of design endeavors that are Modernist in style and intent, but fall [...] «Read more»
