agreed. having good manners is an indispensable virtue and the author is admirably polite, but even this virtue taken to excess will lead to absurdities. of course this is a crime against good taste. anyone with eyes can see it (if not inducted in the cargo cult of modernism). just call a spade a spade. or even call it a shovel - that's close enough and plain language is a virtue too. no beating around the bush with this sort of cult architecture.
I certainly prefer the old style, but I understand how a fad can take hold and seem cool for a moment. I think of that 70s look as kind of like, you know, Pogs. The building was also not in very good shape. (No Penn Station demolition here.)
Great slides from Enid. The same could easily be found throughout the middle of the country. My take on it, having been a Cub Scout out in the middle when a lot of what you're showing was happening, is that people in places whose "traditional" economy was obviously fading (that would be wheat, cattle, and oil in Enid) wanted to feel, for lack of a better word, "modern." Or maybe they just wanted to feel prosperous. So, the new facades went up. It had, and I am not trying to be cynical here, just accurate, something of the flavor of a cargo cult. Or to borrow from a later on movie about the middle, "If you build it, they will come."
Where people eventually came back, a lot of those 1960s facades have been removed and what was underneath restored.
Yeah, I try to be aware that very few people understood themselves to bulldozing our history, or whatever. It feels like that looking back, but what constitutes modernity, history, antiques, junk, etc. is really culturally determined in a lot of ways.
It is indeed culturally determined. And it changes more rapidly and also more unevenly throughout the population. than I think we sometimes understand. You are inspiring me to toss an updated version of an old essay into my Substack.
You actually went there and got the pictures! Wonderful.
Enid, like other oil towns, went through booms and busts. Each time it boomed, new houses were built to hold the incoming workers. When it busted, the new workers left for other booms, and the houses were sold cheap to locals who moved up from the next layer down. At each upward ripple the worst houses were left vacant and torn down. This ratchet effect tended to keep the housing stock fairly fresh.
The busts also emptied out parts of downtown. When I lived there in the 70s, most of Broadway Tower was vacant. It's finally slated for demolition now.
Incidentally, the bell-shaped building was Bell Jewelers for a long time. Its facade was iconic.
The concrete skirting seems quite unique. I wonder why they elected for this, as it probably was more expensive than the metal and glass skirting that seems more common in the mid 20th century.
This could simply be a distortion in the camera lens or the printing process, but the far end of the five-story wood frame building has a distinct Leaning Tower of Pisa look to it, as if it is one day destined to fall forward into the street.
One reason late 19th century construction in New York is in relatively good shape is that it is cheek by jowl with other buildings and they are protecting each other from the weather and helping bearing walls remain plum.
Quite frankly, I can't see anything worth preserving in this building.
I would call it a crime against good taste, personally. The building version of https://www.reddit.com/r/Justfuckmyshitup/
agreed. having good manners is an indispensable virtue and the author is admirably polite, but even this virtue taken to excess will lead to absurdities. of course this is a crime against good taste. anyone with eyes can see it (if not inducted in the cargo cult of modernism). just call a spade a spade. or even call it a shovel - that's close enough and plain language is a virtue too. no beating around the bush with this sort of cult architecture.
I certainly prefer the old style, but I understand how a fad can take hold and seem cool for a moment. I think of that 70s look as kind of like, you know, Pogs. The building was also not in very good shape. (No Penn Station demolition here.)
Great slides from Enid. The same could easily be found throughout the middle of the country. My take on it, having been a Cub Scout out in the middle when a lot of what you're showing was happening, is that people in places whose "traditional" economy was obviously fading (that would be wheat, cattle, and oil in Enid) wanted to feel, for lack of a better word, "modern." Or maybe they just wanted to feel prosperous. So, the new facades went up. It had, and I am not trying to be cynical here, just accurate, something of the flavor of a cargo cult. Or to borrow from a later on movie about the middle, "If you build it, they will come."
Where people eventually came back, a lot of those 1960s facades have been removed and what was underneath restored.
Yeah, I try to be aware that very few people understood themselves to bulldozing our history, or whatever. It feels like that looking back, but what constitutes modernity, history, antiques, junk, etc. is really culturally determined in a lot of ways.
It is indeed culturally determined. And it changes more rapidly and also more unevenly throughout the population. than I think we sometimes understand. You are inspiring me to toss an updated version of an old essay into my Substack.
Nice detective work.
Good story and pictures. Reminded me of Stewart Brand’s 1995 book, “How Buildings Learn,” about how structures can become living organisms.
You actually went there and got the pictures! Wonderful.
Enid, like other oil towns, went through booms and busts. Each time it boomed, new houses were built to hold the incoming workers. When it busted, the new workers left for other booms, and the houses were sold cheap to locals who moved up from the next layer down. At each upward ripple the worst houses were left vacant and torn down. This ratchet effect tended to keep the housing stock fairly fresh.
The busts also emptied out parts of downtown. When I lived there in the 70s, most of Broadway Tower was vacant. It's finally slated for demolition now.
Incidentally, the bell-shaped building was Bell Jewelers for a long time. Its facade was iconic.
That's a shame about the Broadway Tower. Unfortunately I didn't make it there haha, these are Google Maps images! They're quite good nowadays.
Oops. I didn't see the usual Google arrows and logos, so I figured they were real pictures!
The concrete skirting seems quite unique. I wonder why they elected for this, as it probably was more expensive than the metal and glass skirting that seems more common in the mid 20th century.
This could simply be a distortion in the camera lens or the printing process, but the far end of the five-story wood frame building has a distinct Leaning Tower of Pisa look to it, as if it is one day destined to fall forward into the street.
One reason late 19th century construction in New York is in relatively good shape is that it is cheek by jowl with other buildings and they are protecting each other from the weather and helping bearing walls remain plum.
Quite frankly, I can't see anything worth preserving in this building.