In historic preservation circles, the 1950s are often reviled.
The postwar car culture that bloomed in the ’50s is blamed for the demolition of many turn-of-the-century buildings and the desertion of downtowns. Modern architecture was considered to be soulless and was held up as the reason why “old” buildings should be retained and restored.
“Nearly every community in the country lost ornate public buildings, libraries, schools, hotels and churches,” wrote Michael Sullivan in an article about the changes to postwar America. “New meant good, old meant bad. Things modern, improved, king size, filter tipped or automated were good. Things decorated, detailed, delicate or Victorian were bad.”
So when some of the same preservationists argue that what was once modern is now historic, there is bound to be a disconnect with the public. How can an architectural style known as modernism now be historic?
But many of those buildings are approaching 60 years old, well within the 40- to 50-year range of most historic preservation laws that grant tax advantages for restoration and reuse.
Someone once wrote that we reject the architecture of our parents and embrace the architecture of our grandparents. That might explain why baby boomers gravitate to the ’20s craftsman that grandma lived in and why post-baby boom generations appreciate the buildings and neighborhoods and pop culture of the 1950s.
In Seattle, a preservation board voted last month to place an early ’60s diner on the protected list, blocking construction of condominiums. Another effort is being made to save a small concrete building that once housed a nuclear reactor on the University of Washington campus.
Tacoma is just starting to survey the Miller Plat, a ’50s-era residential neighborhood on the West Slope, as a possible historic district. And if the economy ever picks up again, Tacoma will see a fight over the Mueller-Harkins car dealership at Sixth Avenue and St. Helens, now in the way of a possible hotel project.
The state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation saw it coming. Five years ago it encouraged people across the state – both professional and amateurs – to start thinking about more-recent architecture and whether it should be saved. Called “Nifty From The Last Fifty,” the survey identified 250 properties across the state as examples of postwar architecture that tell an important story.
Working with the state was the Western Washington chapter of the group Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement – an organization of significance if only for its acronym Doco-Momo-Wewa.
There are some that should attract wide acceptance: the Pacific Science Center and the first of the 1960s skyscrapers in Seattle; St. Joseph Hospital in Tacoma; and the Pritchard Library in Olympia. Others might be viewed as plain ugly, like the General Administration Building in Olympia and the cylindrical car park across from Seattle’s downtown Macy’s.
But there are plenty of examples in Tacoma that might escape notice, despite their value, such as Charles Lea’s Washington Mutual Bank at 11th and Pacific, architect Alan Liddle’s Tanbera House on North Yakima, Silas Nelsen’s City Light Headquarters on South 35th, and Paul Thiry’s Christ Episcopal Church on North K Street.
Even Frisko Freeze on Division Avenue is a good example of car-culture architecture that might some day make a historic preservation list. If so, it will certainly be subject to complaints that nothing historic happened there.
But preservation is about saving not just the outstanding, but the typical. If both Union Station and the Bone Dry Shoe Company can be preserved as important examples of an era, so should both the Sky Terrace Apartments and King’s Drive In.
So far, just one postwar building is on Tacoma’s historic register – the 1955 addition to the Tacoma Building at South 11th and A Street. Many more are coming.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657
peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com
blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics
