California Dreaming
One of the reasons for my loathing of modern architecture is its relentless utilitarianism; as James Howard Kunstler once wrote, and I paraphrase out of laziness, its schools and libraries fail to convey the higher calling of learning, its courthouses offer no visual cues about the majesty of law, and even its banks fail to inspire confidence; no feeling of permanence and strength comes from a place that looks like a fly-by-night check cashing operation, or a more permanent maximum security prison. Not too long ago, and well within the modern idiom, though, there were always exceptions. Back in 1968, the 
Bank of California unveiled its Portland branch, and my crazy grandmother, Etta, was so excited about it that she hauled my older brother and sister to its grand opening, and I was dragged there multiple times thereafter as she withdrew and deposited to avail herself of free toasters and such.
Just a year before Apollo 11, corporate America was employing Jetson’s-style grandeur in a way that I think now has been lost to developer-driven value engineering, and our built environment is demonstrably the poorer for it. An extravagant monument like the Bank of California Tower, Portland, would never be built today. The imposing front entry calls to mind a Roman Temple; the scale of the lobby makes the mere mortal feel small. 
The dollar-bill green slate, as a previous critic called it, expresses, inside and out, the elevator and stairwell shafts, and the rest of the building a soaring and futuristic, yet oddly traditional, expression of height and strength. (It was, briefly, the second tallest building in the city…)
Delicious details abound; the slender tower covers only a small portion of the site, leaving a monumental first floor bathed in natural light with a beautiful courtyard enclosed within. Driving into the parking garage from Broadway, the motorist is greeted by curving travertine walls and a gorgeously lit fountain, driving on tiled floors. 
The lobby, which once housed ordinary teller windows and has now unfortunately been subdivided still breathes luxury and excess, and I mean that in a good way. I had to wait for the post 911 security apparatus make the necessary phone calls that allowed me to take pictures without being tased, (note the wary eyes pealed upon me at all times…) but I think you’ll agree it was worth it.
Who’d have thought that a 1968 building could be, well, historic? Someone like me who saw, with increasing alarm, what would come after, that’s who.
I have been, and will be away from the computer most of the weekend, but I did want to drop by and thank you for this. Hateful and ugly as some of the extreme forms of American architectural optimism in the Sixties could be — think of all of those 24-hour chain restaurants in LA with 40 foot high neon signs, orange leatherette booths, and hyperbolic paraboloid roofs covered with colored pebbles — I confess to a certain nostalgia for them.
Cost is always a factor for the owner — Frank Gehry is quite eloquent, and quite down to earth about the challenges — but in the Sixties, sheer exuberance did occasionally prevail, as with your fountain-in-the-parking-garage. When considered in the context of, say, Chartres cathedral, I have to say that the creations of our modern bean-counters do seem shortsighted. To the builders of Chartres, cost was no object at all. If it took 200 years to raise the money, so be it. The Glory of God came first. Considering the wonder that it bequeathed to us — however repurposed for wide-eyed tourists it may be — I gotta figure that they got their money’s worth.
Even more recently, there were the great railroad stations, lavish department stores, sumptuous hotels; architecture intended to impress and built with seemingly little worries about cost; capitalism hasn’t always produced such schlock. My favorite LA oddity used to be the Home Savings branches, on prominent corners all over the city…. Epypto/Mayan/Aztec via George Jetson and lots and lots of gold. I think they were started by that despicable Ahmanson, and judging by her orange-carpeted conversation pit in her louche, excessive 70′s palazzo, I think Mrs. Ahmanson may have had something to do with the design, that ol’ cocktailhag. (I have a 1980 book on LA architecture by Brendan Gill in which the lady herself poses in her, no lie, caftan and beehive.)
Mosaics, too. Don’t forget the mosaics. And God, what about WPA art deco? Have you ever been in the LA Terminal Annex, at the corner of Alameda and Brooklyn Avenue — now César E. Chávez Avenue? A misplaced faith in our technocratic future, perhaps, but what glorious enthusiasm, like the porte-cochère mural at Bullocks Wilshire. We’ll never see their like again, I’m afraid.
My ex had a theory about why every style of architecture in LA tended to be so over the top, “Everything’s clamoring for attention because it goes by so fast.” I think that’s about right.
I’ve never been to the terminal; my forays there have always been to Disney Hall or the Music Center and high-tailing it out of downtown as quickly as possible. Talk about no there there. It’s a dreary, spooky place, and has been since shortly after Bullock’s put up their mural.
Ah, what you’ve missed. The Bradbury building, the Million Dollar Theater, the Grand Central Market, Union Station, Phillipe’s, the Biltmore Hotel, the public library, and back in the day, the most amazing Palacio de Novias I’ve ever seen (Broadway and 3rd.)
I forgot to say, lots of there there, if you know how and where to look. (But then, as you know, I love LA. Me and Randy Newman alone amongst the Philistines.)
I admit I never liked the place, even though I spend so much time there, and when I lived there we had a wonderful house in Laurel Canyon. I do like a lot of the architecture, but there’s so much crap in between. I do remember a building downtown where I attended a rather excessive party; it appeared to have once been a hotel, just South of Wilshire between MacArthur Park and Pershing Square. It was monumental Egyptian Deco, with giant exterior buttresses that looked like sarcophagi. Inside, a red carpeted staircase at least twenty feet wide was straight ahead in the cavernous lobby, leading to a mezzanine twenty feet above. The room was forty feet high if it was an inch. The place had a washed-up, down-at-heels feel to it, but the beauty and permanence of the materials defied years of neglect.
Do you know by any chance what building that is? Owing to the large numbers of chemical stimulants I had that evening, I never got the name or history.
Does this look familiar?
The Mayfair Hotel
Wow. It’s so fancy now I barely can tell if that’s it or not. Somehow I’m nostalgic for the dumpiness; looks as though they covered up the original ceiling too, A/C and recessed lights being much more important than beams and coffers, and all the stone and dark wood has been painted. Vanilla. Ah, well. At least they didn’t tip it over.