midwestern bridges

steel bridge 03

Before interstate engineers replaced our river crossings with solid, straight, under-supported super-slabs of concrete highways, spidery steel bridges carried us across the impediments to the relentless to- and fro- of an increasingly mobile society.

steel bridge 01

When you pass through the steel rib cages of these older bridges, especially the narrow, long spans, crossing a river feels like a celebration, an exciting transformation from one place to the next.  The uniformity of road surface, side rails and driving surface of concrete pier bridges celebrate only the efficiency of travel, not the journey.

steel bridge 02

These bridges make a space amongst themselves, an interstitial place between here and over-there.  Because the structure of the bridge is above you and around you, you don't simple glide across a river or steep valley, but you feel the suspension from gravity of that leap across space.

roads West

oregon trail

On a recent roadtrip I followed the path of two of America's most famous roads - the Oregon Trail and old Route 66. They say the adventure is in the journey, not the destination, but both of these pathways existed to traverse the country as quickly and safely as possible on the way to the West and a better future.  The journey was long and arduous, sometimes dangerous, and the prospect of the gleaming future in California was ardent enough to persevere the trials of the trail.  You might get your kicks on Route 66, but you weren't too linger too long.

The Oregon Trail, as most of us know from school, was the primary wagontrail west that departed St. Louis and crossed the plains of what was later to become Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and beyond.  The trail itself is not a single path, but a series of braided trails largely following water courses and passing through the Rocky Mountains and over the Continental Divide at their lowest and most accessible location, South Pass City in Wyoming. And like that city, now a ghost town, the paths of the Oregon Trail are long-abandoned and obscured.  There are some places where roadways were put down in their place, some contemporary river and stream crossings in the same historical locations.  But for the most part, the Oregon Trail has disappeared in farm fields, pastures and range.

route 66 sign

Route 66 is the fabled early automobile journey west, from Chicago to Los Angeles.  Like the Oregon Trail, it was a path of dreams, a trajectory to sunshine and the abundance of the West Coast.  And like the Oregon Trail, it has also largely disappeared.  There are sections in most states that can be identified and even driven along, but there are significant stretches that have been lost.  The interstate highway system made Route 66 obsolete and greatly reduced the driving time across the midwest.  But with this efficiency gain, there has been a loss of the progression of small towns and eateries, gas stations and motels that were sprinkled along the route.

route 66 abandoned buildings

What is most interesting to me is that these two most famous routes West, fundamental chapters of the history of the country, have largely disappeared in a relatively short span of years.  Searching websites, old maps and documents can reveal their paths, but actual on-the-ground discovery is rather difficult.  Route 66 is infrequently  marked with some historic road signs and you can find the occasional historic markers for the Oregon Trail, but history and 'progress' fling us along so rapidly, that these old routes are swept away with little regret and short eulogies.

dairy rama sign

Maybe these paths West, these winding journeys to a better life, have withered away like the pilgrimage paths of the Middle Ages.  No longer able to sustain our belief in the myth of redemption at the final destination, the presence of the paths themselves are unwelcome reminders of dreams lost to reality, faith in that "next great future place beyond the horizon" exposed as naive myth. Better to erase that nagging reminder in the guise of progress.  We get there faster now, but the journey is not so rich and the destination no longer Shangri-la.

small town movie theatres

movie theatre 01

Most of the smaller towns that I passed through on a recent road trip had their version of the local movie palace.  And most were closed down along with the rest of the storefronts along the main street.   The emptiness of middle America is remarkable and so sad.  We all hear the statistics about the growth of the larger cities and the gradual emigration away from small towns.  But something about the desolate marque of the old movie theatre strikes me as the most melancholy of the all the main street ghosts.

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You can almost see and hear the activity of the crowd out front, the ticket sellers booth and the couples lingering after the show.

movie theatre 02

These buildings were also the real stars of the main street.  They were fantastical and showy, brash and sometimes clownish in their attempts to draw our attention, and all the more so when standing next to the somber drugstore and barbershop.

movie theatre 04

Some are still open of course.  I would have loved to have seen a show at the eponymous theater in Lamar, Colorado on the eastern plains.  Any movie in that place gets an extra star.

the Flyover

flyover01

Over the recent Thanksgiving holiday break I took a roadtrip from Colorado to my native Kentucky.  This is the vast Flyover land of the center of the United States.  It is roughly the former vast inland sea from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachian Mountains.  It is certainly the least densely populated one third to one half of the the US, and largely dominated by fields and pasture, sheds and barns, farmhouses and shacks of agricultural America.

This immense area - eastern Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, western Kentucky - is not the stuff of dramatic landscapes.  That is not to say that it is not beautiful, but it is a softer, more subtle set of relationships between land and sky that makes this area's initial uniformity peel away to reveal an intensely beautiful sense of place.  And in that flat, or gently rolling landscape, a building sticking up from the earth holds a kind of power that qualifies the space around it.  A sense of space aggregates around a building.  Here in the Rocky Mountains and in so many places along the eastern seaboard, there seems to be a natural space that buildings have been placed within.  But in these midwestern plains, a building makes a space, a small domesticated sphere that comes into being only by the nature of the building.

flyover02

Frank Lloyd Wright knew this.  He clearly understood how a building sits on this flat earth and how a large, sheltering roof can make a space more profound than a series of walls.  On my recent trip I did not visit any of his iconic prairie-style houses, but rather the Price Tower in Oklahoma.  More about that in an upcoming post.

Driving for many hours is a great way to reflect on things, and for me this naturally falls to things architectural.  Over the next few weeks I will post some more photos and thoughts that bubbled up during this long drive.  Send me your thoughts.

First Christian Church, Boulder, Colorado

First Christian 01

As almost anyone can attest to, one of the very first buildings that most people see on arriving in Boulder is the First Christian Church on CO 36/28th Street, in southeast Boulder.

Built in 1960 and designed by Nixon and Jones, it is an excellent introduction to Boulder's great collection of late Modernist architecture.

The main sanctuary is the west-projecting prow that mimics the angled flatirons on the horizon and is clad in long strips of blue glass with a decorative, multi-colored geometric motif.  The dropping site grade accentuates the projecting prow and the long, white horizontal balcony acts like a visual cantilevered beam simultaneously anchoring the building to the ground and allowing for it to soar upward.

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Alongside the form of the sanctuary space is a stark brick "campanile", lozenge-shaped, standing just to the east of the main entry.  While I don't think this tower houses any bells, it does act as that typical vertical element of the traditional campanile, distinguishing the entry and providing a vertical counter to the horizontal impetus of the front of the building.

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The east side of the building is a series of low, single-story structures, an office and school.  But the heart of the building clearly lies in the west sloping face.

First Christian 02

The sanctuary portion of the building has been empty for quite a few years and is suffering from some much needed delayed maintenance.  The soffits are showing some damage and the brick, with its raked horizontal joints and flush vertical joints, so typical of Wright-inspired mid-century architecture, is in need of proper tuck-pointing.

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There are development plans afoot for much of the site, including some demolition, but retaining the sanctuary and campanile.  As First Christian sits along the most-traveled entry into Boulder, thousands of folks travel past it everyday without much of a thought.  Certainly the sites around this church have sprouted many buildings of ever-increasing size and articulation, diminishing the impact of the work.  Nevertheless, it would be difficult to imagine Boulder without this iconic, welcoming edifice.

First Christian 04

Robert Adams, images of the American West

New Tracts, west edge of Denver, Colorado, 1974

Currently at the Denver Art Museum is an exhibit of the photographic work of Robert Adams.  Robert Adams grew up in Colorado and is best known for his photographs of the New West - the human impacts on the landscape.  Unlike Ansel Adam's stunningly beautiful images of western landscapes, Robert Adam's images are a combination of the joy and beauty of the west alongside its degradation and exploitation.

Many of Adam's most arresting images are those of the new housing encroachments on the landscape throughout the 1960' and 70's.  The stark, high-altitude light of the Front Range puts into sharp focus the stark isolation of the suburban dream contrasted against the expansive emptiness of the western sky.

Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1968

I first ran into Adam's work through the many books of photography that he produced.  The New West, Summer Nights and West from the Columbia are but a few of the more than twenty books of thoughtful, sometimes disturbing, but always beautiful  images.

From the South Jetty, Clatsop, County, Oregon

I strongly recommend the exhibit.  It is simply presented and the images are arresting and intriguing in a way that the books can only hint at.

North of Keota, Colorado, 1969

Robert Adams

The Place We Live, A Retrospective Selection of Photographs

Sept 25 - Jan 1, Denver Art Museum

(all photos by Robert Adams, from What Can We Believe Where? )