The "re-skinning" of the buildings of Phoenix


In addition to tearing down old buildings, Phoenix does something that I call "re-skinning" buildings. That is, it takes old buildings and covers them up with a modern exterior. There are a lot of old buildings like that around Phoenix, and the example that I often point to is on the northwest corner of Central Avenue and Adams, the Gooding Building. Take a look at it if you work or live downtown, or take a look at it on Google Street View, and you'll see what I mean. This building was built in territorial times, and was "re-skinned" in the 1950s. And now it's such a plan box with windows.

Now waitaminute here, this isn't a conspiracy, man. There aren't a bunch of evil people walking around Phoenix laughing maniacally. This was all done with the best of intentions. I'll see if I can explain.

As a designer myself, I cringe when someone makes a mess of something by "fixing it up". It could be a friend who just invested a lot of money to make a mess of the design of his car, it could be someone who re-designed the porch of their house to look like a horror. Invariably these people post photos on Facebook and proudly proclaim what they'd done, and their friends "like" it. I just turn away, sadly. Because they'll never know.

My parents, bless their hearts, were very good at making a mess of things. One of my prized possessions is a cedar oak chest that had once belonged to my great-great-grandmother. In the 1970s my parents covered it with paint, and in the '90s, when I got it, I took the paint off, revealing the beautiful oak underneath that had been "re-skinned" to make it look better (I guess).
Support Arizona history by becoming a patron on Patreon

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring blog posts are shared there daily, also there's "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, and super high-resolution photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona
The same thing happens to buildings. With the best intentions, people "fix them up", usually to fit in with the current design fad. Suddenly bricks are considered unsightly, and are covered with stucco. Or maybe stucco is considered unsightly, and is covered with bricks. Either way, the original design integrity is lost. And as a designer, I prefer to see how it was originally, what I call "off the drawing board". I look for this everywhere, even at car shows. I walk past all of the cars from the 1930s that have been chopped up and modified with fiberglass. No, I won't criticize (that's no way to make friends!), but I wish they wouldn't do that. I look for cars that have their design integrity intact, as if they rolled off the assembly lines yesterday - and yesterday was 1935.

So that's where I stand on re-skinning. I understand it, and I understand that most people like it, and that's it's done with best intentions. But I don't like it. And when someone is restored back to look the way it did when it was new, I love it. I time-travel.


Image at the top of this post: the Gooding Building in the 1920s, northwest corner of Central Avenue and Adams, Phoenix, Arizona. The tall building next to it, the Heard Building, is still there, but has been treated with more respect.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more