Ah, yes. Everyone complains about the 60's, but fails to remember just how completely loony the 50's were. So were the late 40's. Here's an example.Some troop of performing jackasses, who thought they knew the future commissioned Norman bel Geddes to redesign the whole damn city. See that at the bottom. They'd have bulldozed the whole Old South End to build an international airport. What about the people who lived there? In the late 40's and through the 50's, people didn't matter. You can't let a little thing like people stand in the way of progress. Besides, after all those old eyesores in the Old West End were bulldozed, they could all move to nice modern apartments. If you'd called it a brave new world, the "civic leaders" who came up with this exercise in vandalism would have taken it as a compliment.
What's always interested me about this period is the fact that the bozos never noticed the contradiction. We'd just defeated Hitler, then turned right around and started up the bulldozers to give us "urban development" that always ended up looking like a modified form of Albert Speer's plans for Berlin.
2 comments:
I guess since we were paying for the restoration of Japan and Germany, to some extant the powers that be thought visual progress was neccesary at all costs.
Very interesting blog, I like it.
Ah, Jeffrey, your retrospectoscope is a remarkable instrument.
Relying strictly on memory, Norman Bel Geddes was commissioned to design the "Toledo Tomorrow" concept exhibit by the Blade, among others. In 1945 the model was set up in the museum building at the zoo, and most of the city -- including all the school kids -- trooped through the exhibit, "oh'd" and "ah'd" and proclaimed it marvelous -- even the poverty-stricken black kids from along Washington, Dorr, and Nebraska.
You see, during the preceding 16 years Toledo first was hit by the Great Depression -- hit harder than almost any other American city. At one point more than 70% of the work force was unemployed. Many of Toledo's few structures from that era (for example, zoo buildings and the library) were built by those unemployed when employed by the WPA.
The Great Depression was immediately followed by WWII -- the most fearsome and largest war America ever fought (15,000,000 men conscripted, all of Toledo's factories devoted to war production). At it's end, Toledo had seen essentially no new private construction for 16 years, and people had been unable to purchase the great new inventions featured at the 1939-40 New York world's fair. By war's end, everyone expected a brave new world, and Toledo turned to Adrian-born Norman Bel Geddes to show them that new world.
The dominant architectural form at the beginning of the Depression was art deco, so that determined both such buildings as the library -- and the "Toledo Tomorrow" model.
Yes, the model converted the old south end (my family's home at that time) into an airport. But the poorer citizens displaced by the airport were pleased with the concept because it promised them modernistic high rises instead of the squalid run-down slum shacks they then were living in.
And of course it never happened -- instead, today we have what you see (I'll resist the urge to lengthen this further).
Unfortunately, the model disappeared long ago, along with the dreams we cherished at the end of that war. Today, even photos are hard to come by.
"Toledo Tomorrow" was long before the travesties of the '50's -- perhaps you will want to adjust your retrospectoscope.
Sorry for going on so, but...
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