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Five Things | William L. Bird, Jr.
This week we asked William L. Bird, Jr., author of the recently released Souvenir Nation, to share Five Things.
1. John Baeder’s “Gas, Food, and Lodging”
The painter John Baeder collected real-photo and linen paper postcards of gas stations, restaurants and motels at a time when other collectors ignored them as worthy subjects. Such was Baeder’s interest that postcard dealers at the shows he frequented created a category for him that has since become the norm: Roadside. Here is one of his favorites in a chrome card, which he might have published had he pursued his interest into the high-gloss 1960s.
2. The revival of Federal architecture and design à la Mission ’66
After the debacle of the Park Service’s demolition of Richard Neutra’s Gettysburg Visitor Center, the recent renovation of the administration building at the National Arboretum off Bladensburg Road in Washington, D.C., gives one hope. The building floats above a shallow black-bottom pond, whose renovation is to be completed next year. As I write this, the news has come that the Arboretum’s buildings and grounds will close Tues–Thurs for the sequester.
3. Artist George Sánchez-Calderón
In 2001 Sánchez-Calderón installed a Villa Savoye replica under a freeway in downtown Miami—a temporary public art project that proved so popular with the highway department and everyone else that it stayed up for three years. The city of Bal Harbour recently commissioned Sánchez-Calderón to commemorate its postwar past with a reflective sculpture erected on the site of Morris Lapidus’s late Americana hotel. Entitled Pax Americana, the installation included a replica Levittown house, homage to the modest frame and shingle homes that once dominated the area as housing for war workers.
4. The outdoor flea markets of Adamstown, Pa.
These markets never disappoint as places to see people—and their things.
5. The renovation of the Smithsonian’s Arts & Industries building
The repetitious pattern of the building’s four main exhibit halls, connecting ranges, balconies and towers becomes even more disorienting when stripped down to its structural essentials. Taking the tour through the scaffolding made me nostalgic for boyhood trips to the old museum to get happily lost in the nation’s attic.
