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Urban Retro: The New Style in City Living
by Michael Johns
This article
first appeared in the June,
2004 SPUR Newsletter, p. 6.
What's new in cities today isn't really new. Nearly everything in our urban revival, from architectural styles and ornamentation to the very idea of neighborhood living itself--is self-consciously and unapologetically derived from the past. But now something even stranger is becoming clear: the new in cities not only isn't new, it isn't very urban either. Although we've resurrected the forms of our cities, we've animated them with a culture straight from the suburbs.
Nowhere is urban retro better on display than in San Francisco. The city has installed old-fashioned lamps downtown and returned vintage trolleys to Market Street, with a sign on each car telling where it last served: 50s Boston, 40s Kansas City, 30s Philadelphia. New skyscrapers apply neo-classical decoration, borrow art-deco forms, or hang the glass curtain wall of the 1950s. Some combine pieces of those styles. SOMA's live-work units recall an industrial past with their glass bricks, exposed I-beams, sheet-metal facades, and galvanized-steel railings. Old neighborhoods are prized for their historical charm while new ones offer what a condo developer calls "the art of urban living." By this he means the urbanity we associate with American cities from the 1920s to the 1950s. He's selling a short walk between your residence and a retail street and the old-time rapport between shoppers and shopkeepers. He's also thinking of things like a neon martini glass hanging outside a chic club, a day at the ball park with the "boys of summer," and a remodeled lounge that advertises itself as "a genuinely retro bar."
American cities copy those of 50 or more years ago because the 1950s was the last time cities had busy downtowns and strong neighborhoods. Their buildings were made almost entirely of brick, stone, wood, and terra cotta. Factory, rail, and waterfront districts still produced and moved goods. City residents displayed a certain sophistication, as movies of that era remind us. And cities played a dominant role--economic, cultural, and political--in the life of the nation. All that came to an end in the late 50s, when cities fell into a long period of physical and cultural decay. American cities will never again be as vital as they were during the first half of the 20th century. That is why cities are prime objects of nostalgia in our very nostalgic age. And what better way to modernize the objects of our nostalgia than by recreating old cities to attract large numbers of today's young professionals? Cities suffered for decades, after all, and lost middle- and upper-class residents. Renewal projects failed to improve them. They are shrinking parts of an expanding and increasingly hegemonic suburban society. And a number of well-off people now find suburbs boring or homogeneous. No wonder cities seem fresh, even exotic, and thus ripe for a nostalgic comeback. This comeback can be impressive. Shoppers go downtown again. Local retail streets are lively. New skyscrapers look better than those built 20, 30, or 40 years ago. Industrial districts that were once decrepit and dangerous are now home to people with money to spend. For the first time in half a century, cities are in vogue.
They've become fashionable by adopting the fashions of earlier times. Today's architectural philosophy, for example, seems to be that "copying something good beats inventing something bad." Now that's a good philosophy, and it has been used before: American architects have always found precedents in classical buildings, some architectural styles have seen revivals, and many 19th century facades combine ornaments from the past. But if architects once used historical motifs to grace new architectural forms or express a sentiment of their times (or simply out of habit and tradition) they now borrow older styles and mimic neighboring ones to conjure up an abstract sense of "history" and fit new buildings to their settings. A San Francisco architect uses the word "collage" to describe today's buildings. "Collage" in architecture, he suggests, "is very similar to 'sampling' in hip-hop." The result is an architectural plagiarism that is eclectic and precise, a hodgepodge of form and decoration that typically remains at the level of mere gesture: it lacks detail and seems to be saying, "Here is a symbol of a cornice" or "This is meant to indicate a coursing" or "That form suggests the set-back style of massing." The few buildings that try to copy an older style exactly or mimic a neighbor precisely do so with modern materials. Instead of terra cotta, they use hard foam or fiberglass. Panels of brick substitute for brick walls. Roofing slate is synthetic and Deco-like lamps are made of flimsy sheet metal. Otherwise-faithful copies thereby betray themselves for what they are.
Today's eclectic and historical style is partly a reaction by architects, planners, and concerned citizens to the modernist buildings that filled American cities between the 1950s and the 1980s. Most are drab, graceless, flat-topped slabs that can fairly numb your sensibilities: "For perhaps the first thing to say about the new architectural mode," observed John Updike in the 60s, "is that it leaves one with little to say. It glossily sheds human comment." Most modernist buildings shed comment because they were designed in an architectural age that made a fetish of straight lines, ignored history and decoration, cared more about cars than pedestrians, and failed to attune buildings to their settings.
To encourage the making of buildings that absorb comment instead of sloughing it off, San Francisco's Planning Department established downtown conservation districts wherein new buildings must respect the architectural character of their sites. Since the late 1980s, most tall buildings have been tapered, take heed of neighbors and streets, and thereby present a historical and contextual aspect that is usually warmer than the look of the previous forty years.
Similarly, today's Planning Department rejects what had been the city's redevelopment philosophy for nearly half a century. The Department's attitude is clear in its draft report of the Octavia-Market Street area: "The last fifty years here are a story of a community besieged by large projects" and distorted by "an imbalance" in planning that favored clearance and the assembly of small parcels into a few big lots. No wonder "the area has lost its vibrancy, streets have become less inviting, and development has lost its human scale."
So it makes sense for planners and developers to return to the traditional urbanism that Jane Jacobs saw slipping away in the 1950s. New buildings must now fit the scale and look of their surroundings. Local retail streets are designed to integrate their communities. The Central Freeway was torn down and the Planning Department invites you to "envision" a waterfront "where historic structures have been preserved, providing glimpses into the area's past"--a past the city was actively destroying in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. As with planners and developers, so with ads for lofts, magazine stories about neighborhoods, and the theories of architects: they all use words like historic, traditional, and authentic, and talk about restoring a sense of place and the past.
If the rejection of key tenets of modernist planning and architecture is one cause of urban retro, so is the abandonment of suburbs by a small group of mostly white, well-educated professionals. Residents of Central Waterfront lofts, South Beach high-rises, and neighborhoods like Noe Valley and the Haight will tell you they moved to San Francisco to escape the alienation, superficiality, and conformity of suburbs. Their departure from suburbia coincides with a growing nostalgia for the tradition and excitement of urban life. Thus the attempt to instill history and authenticity into the city's streets, buildings, and neighborhoods.
But urban retro has a deeper cause: American urbanism was played out as a creative force by the 1950s. American cities were once better, in other words, and it's unlikely we'll ever improve upon city life as it was between the 1920s and the 1950s.
Even San Francisco, which did better than most cities, declined in nearly every way during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. An elevated highway separated downtown from its waterfront by the end of the 50s, just as another sundered Hayes Valley. The city's docks lost their ships to Oakland's container port in the early 60s. Most of the waterfront fell apart during the next thirty years, while the wrecking ball of urban renewal demolished the north and south sides of the central business district. Whereas downtown in 1950 was the shopping, business, and entertainment center of the city, of the whole region even, it soon became one among many commercial centers. And like central business districts everywhere, San Francisco's lost the widespread urbanity that emerged in the 1920s and peaked in the late 40s and 50s.
The city lost jobs too. Over 200 manufacturers left town in the 1960s alone, taking with them nearly 6,000 jobs and the wages that supported thousands of families and dozens of merchants. At the same time, city neighborhoods began to lose the cohesiveness that had characterized them in the post-war period. During the 1950s, the typical family had been living in its neighborhood for a long time, many shopkeepers had owned their stores for decades, and working- and middle-class wages rose significantly. When redevelopment hit the Fillmore in the second half of the 1950s, this primarily black district was described as a poor but optimistic neighborhood "bustling with vigor." The picture changed radically over the next few decades. The Tenderloin, Hayes Valley, and the Fillmore were beaten down places by the 60s. And if other residential areas--like the Haight, the Castro, lower Nob Hill, the Clement Street district, parts of the Mission--didn't exactly become slums, they did lose people, money, and businesses.
Because American cities hit their peaks in the 1950s, and because we are no longer the essentially urban society we were during the first half of the 20th century, it makes sense to recall the forms, images, and styles of better days. Accordingly, one of the Planning Department's main goals is "to restore San Francisco's long-standing practice of building good urban places." San Jose's Redevelopment Agency is modeling its "Downtown program...after the San Jose of 1900-1950--a 24-hour city where people lived, worked and shopped." New York City is retrieving its past with old-style paving blocks, old-looking buildings, old-fashioned street lights, and old-time kiosks. Chicago recently completed what The Tribune calls a "turn-back-the-clock, retro remake" of its major downtown shopping street. Architects, planners, retailers, developers, practitioners of "the art of urban living"--in city after city they look back to a time when neighborhoods were stronger, buildings looked better, and ordinary people displayed an easy urbanity downtown.
But if urban retro restores and recreates the forms of the old city, it fills them with the culture of our suburbs. Residents of live-work units and converted warehouses, for example, appreciate the blue-collar history of their districts. But they appreciate only the history: the remnant rail spurs, the brick façades of former factories, the advertisements of defunct wholesalers repainted on the sides of converted warehouses. Residents immediately encourage city officials to squelch the sounds, smells, and movements of any real wholesalers or manufacturers still in the neighborhood. The newcomers to such districts want the look of the old city, but the peace and quiet, and purely residential character, of a suburb.
The Village is a new residential enclave (near USF) that features a gourmet market, a fitness center, and a courtyard. Here is the developer's sales pitch: "Whether you choose to lose yourself in the tranquillity of our meandering walkways or step outside The Village walls and wrap yourself in the energetic fabric of the City, this is authentic San Francisco at its finest... While our urban locale celebrates the diversity of this great city, we've created a soothing interior environment that is both warm and inviting." The Village, in other words, blends city and suburb. And it's retro too: The Village's "architectural detailing echoes the rooftops of this classic neighborhood."
New residential towers in South Beach offer the same mix of urban excitement and suburban refuge. One high-rise has a "wellness center," a private club, a park, and courtyard--all designed for "city dwellers seeking sanctuary." Another has a fitness center, valet parking, and a pool in a "courtyard surrounded by century-old olive trees." It is, according to the brochure, "truly resort worthy." Few people take literally the sales pitches for condos and apartments. But those pitches do address the real concerns of developers and residents alike. And the layouts of places like The Village and the South Beach high-rises match the rhetoric.
Gentrified neighborhoods blend the old city with suburban life in more elaborate ways. Gentrification occurs when people of greater means replace those with fewer. In so doing, they renovate buildings and reinvigorate retail streets while changing the character of the neighborhood. For a neighborhood to be gentrified it must have a solid stock of old houses and apartment buildings. Victorians and Edwardians do nicely, but so do all manner of ordinary buildings erected between the late-1800s and the 1920s.
In keeping with the retro style, these areas preserve old things and make new things look old. Gentrifiers restore brick and stone, hang carriage lamps, refinish wood, and install new kitchens and bathrooms while retaining original molding, light fixtures, and door knobs. Many interiors are furnished with "contemporary classic" or "mid-century modern," a blend of styles fashionable between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. One local designer even looks for his ideas in House and Garden magazines from the 1950s. It's better, of course, to have real vintage furniture. Post-war chairs, tables, and lamps are very popular. So are steel desks, filing cabinets, and medical chests. A California firm that restores "vintage office furniture" for urban dwellers is committed to "promoting vernacular American industrial and institutional metal furniture--developed during America's 'Machine Age' from the 1930s to the 1950s."
The ideal gentrified neighborhood centers on a pedestrian retail street that looks something like an old-time shopping avenue. People in Cow Hollow, upper Fillmore, Noe Valley, Cole Valley, or Hayes Valley like small stores that provide what a reporter calls "old-fashioned courtesies." So shopkeepers hang a sign that proclaims the traditional nature of the store and informs you, in an attempt to suggest tradition, when the store was established. Residents are especially fond of the hardware store or shoe repair shop that has been run by the same family for decades.
A typical street in a gentrified district has a retro bar and a new restaurant with an Art Nouveau interior. It might have a 50s-style diner and a "supper club" that professes to "transport us to a time past when food, drink, and music was all enjoyed under one roof in a dimly lit, super cool lounge-like atmosphere." It will certainly have at least one eclectic club or lunch place that combines old wooden booths, new Deco-like lamps, and the inevitable film noir posters. The bathroom door in one such place has a mail slot. Originally it might have been a door to an apartment building, or maybe it was just made to look like it was; who can tell? Historical veracity, as is so often the case in the current revival--with Kansas City streetcars in San Francisco, new buildings made to look vaguely old, the ads of defunct manufacturers repainted on the sides of converted factories--is not only ambiguous, it's unimportant. For the goal is to make the city look old, not to reproduce it accurately.
What lies behind all this residential development, of course, is the idea of "the neighborhood." Dozens of newspaper and magazine articles depict an "old neighborhood feeling" or a "a strong sense of community." Merchants sometimes fly pennants on renovated retail streets to announce the neighborhood's name. Whether they've resurrected the old name or invented a new one, it's a self-conscious attempt to create a sense of neighborhood identity, something old neighborhoods never did.
But today's neighborhood is different from the older one that's supposed to inspire it. It may be true, as a manager at the Redevelopment Agency writes, that "people want to preserve the authentic spirit of San Francisco's neighborhoods and become part of it themselves." Yet for all the retro interiors, individualized shopping streets, and cultivated sense of neighborhood identity, the spirit of gentrified neighborhoods (and live-work districts too) resembles that of a subdivision as much as it does an "authentic" city neighborhood.
Gentrifiers and loft-dwellers, for example, live much less of their lives in their neighborhoods than did those who lived there fifty years ago. Today, few kids and mothers are around during the day. Many of those kids go to schools outside of their neighborhoods and, like their parents, tend to have most of their friends and enjoy most of their activities in other parts of the city. And like a post-war suburb, today's retro neighborhoods lack ethnic clubs, nearby in-laws or grandparents, and merchants who watched an entire generation of kids grow up. They lack the things, in other words, that once provided neighborhoods with a sense of continuity and identity and forced people to develop ties over time, across generations, even across ethnic differences. San Francisco's live-work areas and gentrified neighborhoods have been transformed so quickly, and by such similar kinds of people, that they are nearly as homogenous, with respect to age, race, income, and education, as a 50s subdivision. Surveys published in the San Francisco Urban Institute Quarterly show that 90% of residents in live-work districts are white, 47% of them have college degrees, 38% have post-graduate degrees, and 79% are between 20 and 49 years old.1 A similar if looser profile also holds for most of the city's gentrified neighborhoods.
Gentrifiers acknowledge this lack of diversity, and it's a painful admission because "diversity," after all, is what they say they like about the city. A few will even tell you, as a Noe Valley resident told the Chronicle, that they wish their neighborhood had kept a little of its "working-class charm." The phrase is telling, as if this charm were just another feature of the real estate, like water towers or exposed brick work, that might be preserved for the benefit of yuppies and their property values.
For real diversity in these neighborhoods, you have to look to the dogs. These neighborhoods tend to have more types of dogs than classes of people. It's true that people have always had dogs in cities. But the explosion in the number of dogs, the rise in the number of big dogs, the conviction of many owners that their dogs are entitled to "off-leash experiences" in city parks--all that expresses the suburban ideal of a dog in the yard. Many school yards are now locked up after hours and on weekends because they were being used as dog walks. The car isn't a suburban product. But it is suburban to expect your very own parking space in the city. Such an expectation means new and converted residential buildings must include a built-in parking space for each apartment, a requirement that turns the first floor or two of a building into a parking lot. Parking has become so scarce in some gentrified neighborhoods that sidewalks are regularly used as parking spaces. As a member of a San Francisco neighborhood council put it: "There is a substantial age and experience divide on this issue. Those people who see nothing wrong with it are younger and more recent residents of the neighborhood, who bring a suburban sensibility to the city."
It may be sad to see today's fashionable districts looking something like a 50s street scene with the sleekest cars ever made replaced by SUVs, ethnic clubs taken over by retro bars, family pharmacies and hardware stores supplanted by national chains, children and parents who once sat on stoops displaced by dog-walking couples, and fedoras and New Look dresses traded in for baseball caps and spandex running outfits. But the incongruity of suburban culture in city streets may simply be the price we have to pay for preserving and re-creating the old forms of our cities.
And it's inevitable, anyway. Karl Marx said his times were about "the urbanization of the countryside." Cities were then starting to spread their machines, markets, money, and modern culture across the land. By the 1950s, however, American cities were losing the vitality that had made them such forceful and creative places for nearly a century. American society today, Marx might say, is about "the suburbanization of everything"--including our retro cities.
The tension between the forms of the old city and the manners of today's suburbs is one facet of a deeper contradiction inherent in urban retro: an incongruity between its fabricated look and the earnest meaning and purpose invested in it. Most planners, architects, designers, realtors, residents, and shoppers want to believe that urban retro makes genuine connections to history, imbues each place with a unique character, and provides an authentic sense of tradition. But urban retro is rather more like a stage-set assembled from miscellaneous pieces of the past and from new pieces made to look like they were from the past. The result is that urban retro tries to look old while being new, strives for urbanity in suburban ways, wants authenticity in novel settings, and yearns for diversity and uniqueness in relatively homogenous communities replicated in city after city.
Perhaps time itself will stamp the retro style with history and tradition and make it seem more settled-down and self-possessed. But not if Henry James was right, a century ago, when he said this about American cities: "It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition, and an endless amount of tradition to make even a little taste, and an endless amount of taste, by the same token, to make even a little tranquility."
Michael Johns teaches at UC Berkeley and is the author of The City of Mexico in the Age of Díaz (1997) and Moment of Grace: The American City in the 1950s (2003).
