Googie: The Architecture of the Space Age

Published Jul 21, 2022, 9:00 AM

You may not have heard of it, but you’ve definitely seen it before – 50s buildings with bright, loud colors, roofs at crazy angles, and space-age shapes like starbursts. It turns out that Googie architecture is as fun to look at as it is to say.

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

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