...the New 21

Ahhhhh… it’s nice to be back. I do enjoy traveling the country and preaching the urban design gospel from the book of Chattanooga, but as they say, there is no place like home. As it happens, I am home just in time for my eleventh marriage anniversary. What a patient and forbearing soul she is, to handle the boys and me. I am indeed a lucky man.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an urban design topic this week. I’m not above using travel, the anniversary, the start of the school year, the start of the English soccer season, the impending beginning of college football, home-brewing, and an absurd work schedule as excuses. But rather than leave than you with nothing, I will share a profound life experience that happened this week.

I like to think that I’m pretty good at taking things in stride. It’s not that I don’t loose my temper or get emotional, but I think I do a reasonable job of adjusting to and processing unexpected events. I am rarely shaken when caught off guard, but this week as I was blindsided. As I was making my social media rounds, I opened my Facebook feed and smack in the middle of my screen was a picture of my mother. In this picture my dear, sweet, newly retired mom was tagged in Colorado with her friends shooting some form of brown liquor in broad daylight. I’m…I’m not quite sure what do with that. I’m surprised, because I never remember her having a single drink when I was growing up. Even in these later years, I only seen her with an occasional glass of white wine (on the rocks I might add). This is somehow strange and disconcerting. I think I also feel a bit threatened- in our family I am the one most likely to drink brown liquor during the day. Who knows, maybe sixty-something is the new twenty-one. I guess I better go prepare myself for holiday jell-o shots...

Well, I'll always have my
1993 Beer Olympic Championship
(wow, has it been 20 years?)

99 Problems But the Beach Ain't One

Now, the tired but true maxim…say it with me…I need a vacation after my vacation. It’s time for me to get back to it though. By the time you read this, I'll be back in corn country where my clients and I are working to Reclaim Main Street and start a Riverfront Renaissance. Some day I’ll give ya’ll an update on our exciting work out there, be on the lookout. For now, I offer my thoughts on a vacation in its death throes…

I got up before the crack of dawn on Saturday morning to push, pull and drag the children and our various sandy belongings into the family truckster.  I was in quite a hurry to get back to the Scenic City. We drove for probably 30 minutes before we realized that we left members of the family behind. Beau Brummie and Big Al are the cherished stuffed animals of the oldest, were left at the cottage. The eight year old can count on one small hand the number of nights he has slept without them. For those not in the know, these little guys are simulacrum of sports mascots:  Beau Brummie of Birmingham City FC, and Big Al of the University of Alabama.  After giving brief (but serious) consideration to leaving the damned things behind, I realized that I would not be able to survive the fall-out of that decision. Back to the beach went, and that little excursion cost me more than a precious hour.

Oh, I would never leave you guys...

The reason for the rush is that a member of the C.Rushing circle and dear friend J.Hardaway was to exchange marriage vows that afternoon. I arrived home, passed children off to waiting grandparents, made a quick change to the suit (looking clean I must say), and dashed to the wedding. It was a lovely affair- mirth, happiness and celebration. (Let the record show, however,  that I did not touch the orange and white checker-boarded groom’s cake…I suspect it tasted of disappointment and defeat.) Footballs jokes aside, I’m so happy for my buddy and offer him and his bride my heartiest congratulations and best wishes for the future. This now brings my list of American buddies who have never been married to…one. That’s how old I am.

...of this lot...three down, one to go.

T'was a long day after a long week, and I was happy to have my head back on my own pillow.  I must say that I'm still getting reacquainted with the neighborhood and the house. The reason is quite obvious, and it is one of scale. I built the Madison Street project (my humble abode), on very tight lots, and the houses are of necessity and by design much smaller (by 33%) than a “typical” American house. Our neighborhood is one of the denser single-family neighborhoods in the city (it is not uncommon for lots to be 30’ wide or less). From time to time I feel the house is a bit small, but save for the over-sizing of the newer homes, the neighborhood feels about right. A week in Seaside has, for the time being, distorted my perspective.

On this trip we stayed in a small carriage house of one of the larger cottages. I didn’t think to measure it, but by mental map I bet it was 560sf (plus a 50sf front porch). Making it a little over 1/3rd the size of my home which is itself considered to be small. Despite its diminutive size, the house accommodated the life activities of two adults and two children reasonably well. From a design standpoint, the rectangle is entered from a six-foot deep porch that's as wide as the house. The interior comprises two large rooms (living/dining room and bedroom) separated by a core consisting of a bathroom accessed from bedroom, and galley kitchen and laundry/pantry that serve to connect the two larger rooms. Above the core is a loft with two beds that opens to the high ceilinged living room. As for Seaside, it is New Urbanism (almost) as advertised. (Their motto is dense, diverse and walkable- well, it’s definitely dense and walkable.) A few narrow streets and a number of narrow pedestrian paths connect the town. It seems that there isn’t a cottage that can’t be touched from some right of way, such is the nature of their building set-backs. Within this matrix of path and building, native trees and plants have populated the interstitial space. The place feels like a bespoke suit, albeit a snuggly fitted one. (As an aside, I think this is why the place feels odd to me- there's no such thing as growth and evolution. The entirety was built as one, and while the elements within the framework can be razed and rebuilt over time, the organism is in a kind of stasis.) The result of these conditions is that for a solid week I lived a “normal” life, just in a smaller dwelling and community.  

When I was finally able to kick off my shoes and survey the old homestead, I was shocked to find that both house and neighborhood felt MASSIVE. Could I have lived an everyday life with a wife and two children in 560 sf? Probably not. (The man who complains about not having his Burberry swim trunks probably has more clothes than can fit in a 6sf closet.) The experience however, was a fantastic reminder that the perception of space, and our “needs” are plastic ideals. It's possible to live a rich and rewarding life in less than 4,000 square feet. As we work on the next big thing in Chattanooga- increasing density- we need to make the case for greater spatial economy.

L'accosted

Well friends, coming ‘atcha from the sun and fun of the C.Rushing family vacation. As mentioned in previous posts, when I was a young man my family used to vacation at the Seagrove Villas in Seagrove, FL. This was, of course, years before Seaside and the rest of 30A blew up. After an absence of years, I reinstated the tradition in 2008 by bringing my young ones there. When making arrangements for this year’s trip, however, I sadly found that the Seagrove Villas were no longer. Apparently, the market believes that there is a higher and better use for the site. Despite my sentimental objections, I must confess that the market is probably correct. As a consequence, this year we quaffed the New Urbanist Kool-Aid and shacked up in Seaside.

Seagrove Villas...RIP...

Aside from accommodations, I did an abysmal job of preparing for the trip. We departed the Scenic City and made it as far as Fort Payne, (God’s Own) Alabama before I realized that I forgot my swimming trunks. On a trip to the beach, I forgot to pack swimming trunks. I forgot my beloved Burberry Nova check swimming trunks. Equally as tragic, I left my Burberry bucket hat. As I am ever the slave to style, I think that there are certain stylistic pinnacles that have been reached, and as such, certain standards to cling to. Sunglasses find their highest expression in Ray-Ban Wayfarers; casual shirts- Lacoste polos; athletic shoes- Nike; swimwear and bucket hats- Burberry. Once I find something that is done right and fits well, I seldom deviate.

Fortunately for me, however, Saks at The Summit in Birmingham is right on the way. Saks being one of the relatively few retail outlets for Burberry ‘round here. Unfortunately, yes, they had no Burberry swimming trunks today.  I opted to go slumming with a pair of Lacoste trunks and a fetching pink number from polo. On the hat front, the closest thing I could find to a classic style was a Lacoste bucket hat. I actually made the rationalization that a Lacoste bucket hat is more classic and appropriate than one from Burberry. Was it not a white terry-cloth Lacoste bucket hat worn by my father in the ‘70s that first sparked in my interest in that particular hat typology?

We arrive at the beach, check in to the house and get ready to head down to the beach. I don my flip flops, new trunks, t-shirt and bucket hat, and have a glance in the mirror. Oh my god, I’ve been l’accosted. A closer inspection shows that by unholy accident, everything piece of clothing I brought down or acquired on the way (save the new pink Polo shorts) has an effing crocodile (or is it an alligator?) on it. Lesson One from this week’s post: blind devotion to one way of doing things, no matter how “right” or purpose-suited that way may be, can sometimes lead to unfortunate circumstances (such as me looking like a right tool).

As for reading material while I’m down here, I’ve not made it easy on myself. I'm struggling my way through both The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio and An Autobiography of an Idea by Louis Sullivan. Vitruvius is not a great writer and probably wasn’t a great architect- he just had the great fortune of having his manuscript survive from antiquity. If I am to continue teaching architecture history, however, I feel compelled to read it. I’m half way through…pray for me.

Sullivan’s work has also proved to be a trying read. This is his autobiography, written in the third person, and at time when the florid and effusive use of words was in vogue. Beyond the hyperbole and wordiness, however, is a fantastic story (that I sketched out here a few weeks ago). I’ve been on a Sullivan kick for the last couple of months. I think his story points to a larger pattern in the human condition- that the greatest ideas of man have to be watered down to achieve mass adoption. I need more time to think that one through though. Be on the lookout for a post on that one sometime in the near future.

What is certain is that Mr. Sullivan would dislike Seaside. He was effusive in his criticism of slavish devotion to European precedent. Seaside, of course being a veritable grab-bag of classical revival design. This being the first time I’ve been back since “rediscovering” architecture history, I must say that the place feels a bit hollow. There is none of the proportional rigor that makes Greek classicism sing and there is none of the engineering genius of the Roman works. There is only fashion. In this case, however, it is not the clothes that make the man. It is the subservience of architecture and infrastructure to the person, whether they are active, in repose or in ambulation that makes the place special. Of course, this would be lost on Mr. Sullivan, for he failed to live long enough to see the rise of the sub-urbs and our subsequent struggle to establish a sustainable, American development pattern. Yes, I normally give the New Urbanists hell, but getting blottoed on caipirinhas in a place has a way of softening one’s outlook. 

…and as I’m putting the finishing touches on this post by the pool, my 4-year-old swims up to an elderly stranger and opines, “You look pretty old”…we’re out…pray for me…

Roll out the Welcome Mat

It was brought to my attention that there is no such thing as the "Aquarium Plaza" as I referred to last week. The proper name of the place is "Ross's Landing Park and Plaza". This "was chosen to 1) honor the city's birth name, 2) acknowledge that the space was both park and plaza and, more implicitly, 3) send the message that the space was a public project separate and apart from the privately-funded aquarium." I can't believe I didn't know that. It is for me, however, a lesson that once learned will not be forgotten.

As for this post, it is one for my fellow conservatives.  To all of my liberal friends, thanks for stopping by, but please feel free to take the week off (go treat yourself to a Michael Moore movie or something ;)

The big news this week was, of course, Mr. Obama’s visit to the scenic city. I loathe politics, but I will make a couple of observations. It is a shame that we couldn’t be a bit more civil when the POTUS comes to town. I do not care for his policies* and I think that he has largely failed in delivering on his promises**. His failures, however, cannot change me or change how I choose to respond to the world around me. In this particular case, as a Southerner, I believe it is proper to treat guests (great or small) with respect. Ever heard of Southern hospitality? The fantastic news was that Mr. Obama chose not to come downtown, which would have brought life here to a screeching halt. For that, I am thankful. I’m on shaky ground when talking politics, however, so lets get back to design…

Speaking of Southerners, we should be the best urban designers in the country.  In essence, urban design is a mechanism to express the values of a community, to accommodate, and to make people feel comfortable. Is then urban design not the very essence of hospitality? Is hospitality not in the very DNA of the Southerner? When people visit our communities and homes do we not bend over backwards to be friendly and accommodating?  If that is one of our shared values, it should then be expressed in our built environment.

When we choose to live in a place, to pay taxes there, to work there, to play there, we become part of that community. When we pay those taxes, we are providing for the common of the community. This includes the public realm- the streets, parks, sidewalks, plazas and open spaces that belong to us all. They are owned collectively, and as such the qualities of place describe to others what we as a community value. If we are proud of being friendly and hospitable, our public realm should reflect that. Our sidewalks should be wide, clean, and shaded and lined with elements of interest and activity. Our open spaces should provide for a range of activity and repose with sun and shade, natural and built design elements, and places to see and be seen. In all of these things, every piece of every element of the public realm should exude quality.

Unfortunately, our Southern cities do not always express the finer qualities of our personality. We have joined rest of the country in a wholehearted embrace of sprawl, and perhaps even led the way. Yet sprawl seems a profoundly un-Southern thing. We have a deep appreciation for the land that is perhaps a result of our agrarian past and present, and that is also expressed in our cherished leisure activities of hunting, fishing and camping. Our urban development patterns have, however, conspired to erode that way of life. If we look at the things we value- friendliness, hospitality, generosity, and connection to the earth- it is only logical that they should be combined in the physical embodiment of those values. Somewhere along the way, however, we got caught up in the notion that communal efforts are somehow nefarious. We’re now at a point where we perceive virtually any government expenditure as wasteful and socialist. Although there is an egregious amount of waste and malfeasance in government expenditure, there are obviously legitimate works. Expenditure on the public realm is legitimate. This is not a government hand-out, but represents an investment in a shared physical asset, it creates jobs, and it sets the stage for all of the broader economic activities that take place in our community. Beyond that, it is an expression of pride in who we are- bofth to ourselves and to others.

Look at the political maps and it's clear to see that the South has values and attitudes that set it apart from the rest of the country. Regardless of whether or not we see eye-to-eye with everyone else, we should work to set ourselves apart by expressing our values and attitudes through the excellence of our urban design. Roll Tide.

*I am having serious difficulties with this whole healthcare thing. I work very hard to provide for my family, to keep bread on the table and squirrel a bit away for the boys education. I also try to eat well, work out and otherwise live a (relatively) healthy life. Unfortunately, the reward of self-employment and clean living is the likely doubling of my health insurance premium. Wealth redistribution is all fun and games until it's your "wealth" that's being redistributed. That’s not exactly the change I was hoping for.

**After running on “change”, he has delivered precious little. In my estimation, things are exactly the same as they were before, only the party names have changed. For the record, I was just as displeased with Bush. If “change we can believe in” is a failure, so was “compassionate conservatism”.

…and while I’m on the subject, remember when the President said of successful small businesses “you didn’t build that”? I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was talking about the infrastructure necessary for any of us to conduct business. But even so, who did build that? The government? Where exactly did the government get the funds to build? Taxes. Those taxes are paid by businesses, the people who run them, and the people who find value in their goods and services. I would respectfully argue that they did build that.

Christianmas Edition

Today is the first day in the two and a half year history of the blog that my weekly (or weakly as the case may be) writing time has fallen on a Christianmas. My initial impulse was to take the week off in celebration, but I have decided to soldier on. I am, however, working on some pretty heavy stuff these days so I’m going to go easy on myself with an off-the-top-of-my-head list. On my forty-first birthday I offer:

41 Random Thoughts on the Past, Present and Future of
Urban Design in Chattanooga.


1. Urban design is ultimately about people. Both individual and collective. 

2. The values, beliefs and ideals of community are expressed in the quality of its public realm.

3. Urban design is the tool that gives physical expression to shared community values. 

4. Whether the citizenry recognizes it or not, we are a shining example of how important design and urbanism are in the creation of a vibrant city. 

5. Chattanooga’s renaissance can in part be tied to the level of cooperation and collaboration between the principals. Our situation was so dire that no one cared about who got credit as long as the job got done.

6. One of our current challenges is moving past style to focus on substance. 

7. We currently lack a forum for discourse and debate on issues of urbanism and design. 

8. Getting downtown to the next level is entirely dependent upon increasing downtown residential numbers.

9. Increasing those residential numbers is equal parts attraction and provision. After making the case for why living downtown makes sense, we need to provide the range of residential options and supportive services to make it a feasible option for a broad segment of the population.

10. As we work to attract new residents to downtown, we need to take care of the ones who are already here (think MLKing, Westside, Highland Park, Alton Park, Ridgedale, Avondale, Glenwood, Bushtown, Orchard Knob, Avondale)

11. Density is the key.

12. Miller Plaza district, the first step in our urban design renaissance, can still teach us things. 

13. Do you think the average Chattanoogan in 1980 could imagine that downtown’s biggest problem in 2013 would be finding places for everyone to park?

14. Twenty years on, the design of the Aquarium Plaza still holds up. 

15. While not perfect, the Southside is a remarkable success story.  

16. Despite 30 years of reinvestment and revitalization downtown, most of our urban neighborhoods have not proportionately participated.

17. Downtown is in dire need of a decent Chinese restaurant.

18. I am currently boycotting six restaurants in downtown Chattanooga as a result of their urban design decisions. Fortunately, I am not missing out as their food is shite anyway. 

19. The level of quality in design and construction of our buildings is not good enough.

20. The new pedestrian lights being installed throughout our downtown are generic, lack a connection to place, contribute to light pollution and glare, and fail in their primary purpose which is to provide even and consistent illumination at the pedestrian level.

21. The actions of politicians, design review boards, and citizens have conspired to turn (or perhaps keep?) portions of North Chattanooga into sub-urbs.

22. The US-27 project will destroy the character of downtown by markedly altering the perceived scale of the city and denuding our largest natural green element.

23. The US-27 project will undermine the quality of downtown by reinforcing the auto-centric nature of the public realm in that corridor.  

24. If US-27 goes through as planned, the idea of Westside as a vibrant and integral part of downtown is a dead. The more likely outcome is that the deal for the housing projects expire, those citizens will be relocated throughout the city, and the remaining land there will continue to be parceled out in a sub-urban style as befits the nature of 27 and Riverfront Parkway. 

25. The Westside should be the next catalyst for downtown. 

26. The Center City is realistically the next catalyst for downtown.

27. It hasn’t come up for a while, but speaking of potential catalysts: U.S. Pipe.

28. The city misses the vision of the former Design Studio. Can you imagine the city without the Aquarium, Miller Plaza, the Southside, the 21st Century Waterfront, and our public realm improvements? The original ideas for each of those came out of the Design Studio.

29. After extensive research on the subject, the case can be made that our former Design Studio was the most innovative, influential and effective such entity in the country.

30. That Design Studio, however, was an abject failure as a regulatory extension of government. (which ultimately led to its demise).

31. The success of the former design studio in its heyday was rooted in the fact that they were perceived as neutral brokers operating on behalf of the community.

32. Chattanooga has a strong group of competent urban designers.

33. Unfortunately, not all of our designers get it.

34. Unfortunately, not all of our non-designers get it.

35. A year later, people still talk to me about the Urban Design Challenge- proof that urban design matters to the citizenry.

36. The forthcoming downtown design guidelines will not raise the level of urban design quality in the city, but it should help prevent another Buffalo Wild Wings.

37. It feels like the C-7 guidelines are being held together with spit and bubble gum. 

38. The C-7 guidelines are worthless anyway. 

39. It is worth noting that while quantifiable goals are important, not every important thing is quantifiable.

40. 6 days until the first Birmingham City game!

41. 34 days until the first Alabama football game!


What the Fork? Part 2: A Fork in the Road

Last week I introduced an article about how Americans had co-opted a European tradition for tradition's sake, despite the fact that it made little practical sense. The article also points out that while we continue this tradition the originators ceased long ago. This week, the danger of blindly adhering to someone else's tradition…

The Chicago School was a group of talented architects practicing in the City of Broad Shoulders around the turn of the last century. They were experimenting with new building materials and techniques and were developing a new aesthetic to suit these new forms. The school comprised such illustrious names as Burnham and Root, Adler and Sullivan, Holabird and Roche, and William LaBaron Jenney. While these architects were of the same place and grappling with the same issues, they each did so in different ways. A confluence of events including advances in steel technologies, the invention of elevators, and inflated land costs conspired to give birth to the skyscraper- America’s great contribution to the architectural cannon.

The problem with the skyscraper was that technology had outpaced aesthetic. We now had the ability to make extremely tall buildings, but had no idea what they should look like. The designers of the earliest skyscrapers simply tried to adapt classical European elements to the new form. This technique was awkward and clunky, and had the tendency to be very horizontal in nature. It was Louis Sullivan who was the pioneer in embracing the vertically of this new building form and throwing off the shackles of precedent that worked counter to the inherent nature of the new form and material. I highly recommend reading his article The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered. It is packed full of goodness, and here are a couple of snippets:

“It demands of us, what is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? And at once we answer, it is lofty. This loftiness is to the artist nature its thrilling aspect. It is the very open organ tone in its appeal. It must be in turn the dominant chard in his expression of it, the true excitant of his imagination. It must be tall, every inch of it tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line…”

 “It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”

Genius. Inspiring concepts and clear logic (and some say the birth of modernism). This was our moment. Louis Sullivan and the Chicago School had the philosophical grounding and were poised to lead the United States in the development of our own enduring architecture worthy of the promise of our great nation. Only it didn’t happen.

The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was a watershed moment in the history of American architecture and planning. The exposition, a world’s fair in essence, was to be held in America in honor of the four-hundred year anniversary of the Christopher Columbus journey to the new world. The Americans were under a great deal of pressure to show out, as the French had just done a bang up job of a fair in Paris (including a certain sculpture by a man named Gustave Eiffel). After fierce competition with New York, D.C., and St. Louis, Chicago won the honor of hosting.* This was a bit of a coup for the mid-westerners as they were essentially a frontier town, and not perceived as being as refined and sophisticated as the easterners. What Chicago did have (amongst other things) was this talented group of architects and planners and their new building forms and philosophies.

Daniel Burnham and his partner John Root were the architects and urban designers tapped to oversee the design and construction of the entire Exposition. In the process they created what was in effect the first American comprehensive plan. They were faced with a herculean task and a nearly impossible deadline to pull the thing off. Early in the process, Root, the driving creative force of the partnership, dies. Burnham consults his group of architects (McKim, Sullivan, Olmstead, Hunt, Cobb and Post) and decides that the best way forward is to design the entire exposition in the Beaux Arts style.  The Beaux Arts is a neo-classic style of architecture as espoused by the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Burnham’s decision was based in the belief that a single architectural style would provide unity for the disparate set of buildings on the site. I suspect there was also a desire on the part of the Chicagoans to express just how sophisticated they were and to do that by affecting that paradigm of sophistication, classical European architecture. Louis Sullivan calls bullshit on this.

Sullivan, who actually spent a year at the Ecole in Paris, balked at the historicist styling of architecture. While he was heavily influenced by what he saw during his stints in Europe, he took from the masterworks an admiration of the spirit behind the work instead of rote replication. Upon his return to the States, he was a driving force in the effort to establish an American architecture. Until this point, the best American architects were simply recycling classical European forms (see Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Latrobe). Sullivan (a man of principal and strong opinion) was livid that Burham (a “client-friendly” designer, wink wink), would turn his back on the new and innovative work that members of the Chicago School was pioneering in favor of the stale safety of classicism. Sullivan’s Transportation Building is the sole building in the Exposition not designed in the Beaux Arts style (which pissed Burnham off). It is worth noting, however, that the Transportation Building with it’s “Golden Door” was the only building in the Exposition that gained international critical acclaim.

The Exposition overcomes hardships of all kinds to become a wild success. One of the outcomes of this success is that millions of American visitors return to their homes with grand visions of a clean, gleaming, white, classical city. They left Chicago, returned to their home cities and copied what they had seen. What was essentially a stage set** in classical style became the inspiration for new building projects across the country. Sullivan later lamented:

"Meanwhile the virus of the World's Fair, after a period of incubation ... began to show unmistakable signs of the nature of the contagion. There came a violent outbreak of the Classic and the Renaissance in the East, which slowly spread Westward, contaminating all that it touched, both at its source and outward.... By the time the market had been saturated, all sense of reality was gone. In its place, had come deep seated illusions, hallucinations, absence of pupillary reaction to light, absence of knee-reaction-symptoms all of progressive cerebral meningitis; the blanketing of the brain. Thus Architecture died in the land of the free and the home of the brave.... The damage wrought by the World's Fair will last for half a century from its date, if not longer."

There is no happy ending to this story, we are only left to wonder what might have been. What if John Root had lived, and his more progressive designs had inspired millions of American visitors by a new architecture? What if New York or D.C had won the exposition and left the Chicago School to continue their work along its former trajectory?

The end of Sullivan’s story is very sad. After the Exposition, the economy takes a dive and his partner Dankmar Adler breaks the partnership. Adler was the friendly, well-connected partner who found work for the firm and without him Sullivan had difficulty finding clients. Beyond the issue of personality, classicism was in vogue and no client wanted what Sullivan had to offer. He drank too much and his personal relationships, including his marriage, failed. Sullivan died penniless and alone in 1924. He spent what should have been the most productive years of his life designing an average of one small building per year. What brings me tears is the absolute beauty and unmistakable genius of those works, those small mid-western banks dubbed jewel boxes.

As fate would have it, one of those jewel boxes is located in Iowa, just a short detour away from one of my current projects. Last week I made the pilgrimage to Grinnell to see his Merchant’s National Bank. It is truly stunning. And it talks to you. It proudly exclaims “I am an American bank”. This in stark contrast to banks in classicist revival style that could just as easily be schools, post offices, churches or government buildings in any western country (and the New Urbanists would have us believe this is a good thing). As sometimes happens, life conspired to derail what could have been. 

I fear I have ventured far afield. I was going to make the connection between the literal fork discussed in the article last week with the figurative fork in the road that the exposition proved to be...but that was a bit cheesy. So I suppose the parting observation is that we should ever question why we do things the way we do, and just because something is old and familiar doesn’t make it right. Perhaps the best local example of this is the god-awful, new pedestrian lighting fixture that has spread across downtown like a fine case of warts. The new lights are poor generic copies of a historic type whose form adversely impacts their function. Their introduction is doubly injurious as the fixture they replaced had a much more functional design that was also unique to Chattanooga. The other lesson in the post is that life is not fair. Good ideas don’t always win out. Being on the side of right doesn’t always pay off. The Sullivan story always tears me up- what a waste and oh, what could have been.

*It is worthy of note that it was during this process a New York editor referred to Chicago as “that windy city”

**The buildings were meant to be temporary and were built of frames that were then coated in a plaster and hemp fiber mixture, molded to form, then painted white.

What the Fork?

Let the record show that I am sorely disappointed in you, the reader. I put out a call for recommendations on Chinese food and got (cue the crickets)…nothing. Weak sauce ya’ll. Should you choose to redeem yourself, please feel free to drop me a line any time if you know of something decent. 

While we’re still on food: I came across this article last week (you probably need to read it for this post to make sense). Reading the article took me back to a meal I had several years ago. I was in England to visit the illustrious Jem Jones and watch a few football/soccer games. One Sunday afternoon we joined his parents and grandfather for a meal. The Sunday Roast consisted of roast beef, roasted parsnips, broccoli and carrots, Yorkshire pudding and gravy (straightforward and delicious). About halfway through the meal the grandfather, who was in his nineties I suspect, piped up and asked “Is there something wrong with your knife?” I was caught a bit off guard and fumbled to come up with a response to a question that I didn’t fully understand. Mrs. Jones came to the rescue by explaining to him that Americans perform an odd ritual of silverware utensil switching whilst eating. The whole table of English (who all love America) then piled on regarding this particular American peculiarity. This was news to me, as I never had pause to consider that my mother taught me anything other than solid dining etiquette.

That conversation caused me to rethink how I eat. As a result, I adopted the more efficient Continental method of wielding knife and fork.* It just makes sense- it’s more efficient, it’s equally acceptable from an etiquette standpoint (according to manners mavens), and the practice was derived from a culture that “ain’t from ‘round here”.

I promise that there is an urban design connection to this particular story. You must, however, wait until next week to see if I can pull it off.

*I find, however, that when faced with a very formal meal I often subconsciously revert to the American method. This happened last year at Le Taillevent, which of course didn’t make sense as the French, who the Americans first emulated, actually quit the utensil switch back in 1853.