Googie: Architecture of the Space Age

Before I moved to Los Angeles ( almost 2 years ago now ) I had never heard the wordGoogie . In fact , when a friend — a aboriginal Californian — used the full term I initially thought it must have something to do with Google . I did n’t eff the tidings , but I definitely knew the flair . And I suspect you might too .

Googie is a advanced ( ultramodern , even ) architectural style that help us understand post - WWII American futurism — an era sentiment of as a “ prosperous years ” of fantast design for many here in the yr 2012 . It ’s a style built on exaggeration ; on dramatic angles ; on charge card and blade and neon and wide - eyed technical optimism . It suck up inspiration from Space Age nonpareil and rocketship dreaming . We find Googie at the1964 New York World ’s Fair , theSpace Needlein Seattle , the mid - hundred design of Disneyland’sTomorrowland , inArthur Radebaugh‘s postwar illustrations , and in numberless chocolate shops andmotelsacross the U.S.

Googie is an odd watchword ; a funny word ; a parole that feels like it ’s doing a few vowel - drench lap covering around your tongue before at long last founder out of your mouthpiece . Oddly enough , Googie was used as a deragatory terminus almost from the start — stomach in Southern California and key for a West Hollywood deep brown shop designed in 1949 byJohn Lautner , a student of Frank Lloyd Wright . Architecture criticDouglas Haskellwas the first to use “ Googie ” to describe the architectural cause , after force by the West Hollywood deep brown shop and in conclusion feel like he had determine a name for this style that was fly high in the postwar era .

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But Haskell was no fan of Googie and write a scathing ( by architecture critic criterion ) satire of the style in the February 1952 subject of House and Home powder store . The New York - based Haskell wrote part of his clause , “ Googie Architecture , ” in the voice of a fictional Professor Thrugg , whose over - the - top praise was an bill of indictment of Googie ’s democratic appeal . Haskell was an counsellor of modernness , but a contemporaneousness constrained by his ideas of tasting and polish . Haskell , writing sarcastically as Professor Thrugg :

“ You underestimate the seriousness of Googie . suppose of it ! — Googie is produced by architects , not by ambitious shop mechanic , and some of these designer starve for it . After all , they are work in Hollywood , and Hollywood has let them know what it carry of them . ”

Haskell ’s scorn for Googie was clearly root in his hatred for the flourishes and perceive gumminess of Hollywood .

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Perhaps no one has read Googie and its human relationship to mid-20th century futurism more tight thanAlan Rudolf Hess : an designer , historian and the writer ofGoogie Redux : Ultramodern Roadside Architecture(2004 ) andGoogie : Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture(1985 ) . I spoke with Mr. Hess by phone at his home in Irvine , California .

“ Googie begin after WWII as a definable mode and it get on fire in the culture and lasted for a good 25 age or so , ” Hess says .

Googie is undeniably the super - esthetical of 1950s and ’ 60s American retro - futurism — a time when America was flush with Johnny Cash and ready to return the technological possibilities that had beenpromised during WWII . “ I really feel that Googie made the future approachable to everyone , ” Hess says . As he explain it , Googie was an unpretentious aesthetic meant to appeal to the average , halfway - course American : “ One of the fundamental things about Googie architecture was that it was n’t custom houses for wealthy people — it was for coffee shop , gasoline post , car washes , cant … the average buildings of routine biography that people of that period used and lived in . And it brought that spirit of the modern age to their day-to-day life sentence . ”

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Googie was born in southerly California and much like thebillboard scenehere , owes some of its popularity to something very hard-nosed : get in a car cause you to neglect a lot of commercial activity . Which is to say , businesses need your attention , so they need to stand out through increased size and a sealed level of outlandishness . As Philip Langdon note in his 1986 bookOrange Roofs , Golden Arches : The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants , the laissez - faire sweep of California freeway add to the emanation of Googie :

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California , unlike easterly and midwestern land , did not build toll roads and make travelers jailed to restaurants that had been commission to operate at designate rest stops . California was the land of the freeway , with the choice to exhaust at contend restaurants at one interchange after another , so the restaurants ’ pauperism for a blatant profile was especially vivid . The interrogation face eatery operators by the tardy 50 was : What would catch the eye of fast - moving motorists ?

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Hess expatiate on the observational spirit of postwar Los Angeles : “ Yes , it really did start in Southern California , though it was a national phenomenon . Texas , Florida , New Jersey , Michigan , all of these area also had Googie architecture . But Los Angeles — because it was one of the fastest produce metropolis at that time — had a custom of data-based modern architecture . So the seed of it were in Los Angeles . ”

The 1962 - 63 version ofThe Jetsonswas so dripping with Googie that you could argueHanna - Barberadidn’t really overdo the style — they replicate it . Googie at its most flamboyant and cartoonish is almost beyond parody . And it ’s pretty exculpated that the artists behind The Jetsons were invigorate by the style that surrounded them in Southern California .

The artist and animator working on The Jetsons really did n’t need to drive too far to become enliven by the Googie of Los Angeles . TheHanna - Barbera Studiowas in Hollywood at 3400 Cahuenga Blvd ( I think it ’s the web site of anLA Fitnessnow ) and buildings all across Los Angeles in the late 1950s and early sixties screamed Googie . The Los Angeles International Airport had ( and still has ) the Googie - tasticTheme Building , feature in the October 19 1962 progeny of Life cartridge holder — a particular issue give completely to Americans ’ mid - century enchantment with California . Ship’scoffee shop opened in 1958 at 10877 Wilshire Blvd , just to the south of UCLA.Pann ’s , my personal favorite breakfast spot in L.A. ( try the biscuits and gravy , seriously ) , is at 6710 La Tijera Boulevard . Hanna - Barbera was also just a short movement from Anaheim , where you could see theMonsanto House of the Futureat Disneyland , which opened in 1957 . And of course there was the streamlined , Space Age edition of Disneyland ’s early-’60sTomorrowland .

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The hereafter had get in for those in Southern California and it was a symbolization of even greater matter to descend . From Hess ’s 1985 book Googie : Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture :

But by 1970 , Hess says the architectural finish had changed . “ The interest in the future , the gee - whiz factor about plastic and atomic power and space flight of steps , travel to the lunation , all of these thing that had been fresh and exciting in the 1950s had become more mundane — we bring on the moon in 1969 and then it was over . And also at that time new ideas come in — specifically the ecology bowel movement which start out to say that we do have point of accumulation on how we can habituate our resources . And an pursuit in more small - ordered series , residential , traditional , architecture came into manner . You see this changeover in tastes in popular culture I think most vividly in the variety of the McDonald ’s prototype . In 1953 the epitome was Googie all the way — it was bright , shiny , bold colour , big arch , very dynamic upswept roof , atomic number 10 , etc … ”

“ But in the late-1960s , ” Hess says , “ McDonald ’s introduced a unexampled prototype which used brick as its walls and a mansard roof — a very traditional flesh . McDonald ’s felt that it would appeal to their customers at this clip , and it did . Those are some of the reasonableness why Googie finally faded as a pop style . But then of course it ’s revive as a democratic vogue in the last 20 days or so . ”

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The elan know as Googie , in fact , has many name . It ’s sometimes known as Populuxe , and in some circles is just considered modern computer architecture . But it seems to me most meet to call the style by the term used by its most famous depreciator . Googie is both the future we yearn for and the future we never asked for .

So we tilt our hat to the believer and non - believers likewise — both Lautner and Haskell and all the other spook of the mid-20th century , jostling for their own vision of our American landscape painting . These beautiful , bizarre competing visions of our future — or our time to come that never was .

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