Gorgeous Googie

                             
   This week we are looking at another golf course building in North Little Rock. This is the Greens at North Hills, but it is historically known as the Sylvan Hills Country Club. The Sylvan Hills Country Club was designed by local architect Raymond Branton, the same architect who designed Fire Station No. 6, and it was completed in 1963. This is actually the third building to stand on this site as the Country Club. The first was built by Justin Matthews in 1927, but it fell into disrepair and was eventually torn down. A second building was constructed in 1946, but it burned down in 1961. Undaunted, the community decided that third times the charm and they commissioned yet another to be built, which still stands today. Branton's design for the club house was a striking departure from the previous two, which had both been very traditionally styled buildings. Branton preferred to design in a Modern architectural mindset, as we saw in the Fire Station No. 6 discussion. However, in this building he decided to go a bit more High Modern.

Seagrams Building in New York City by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1958)

   Branton's design for the Country Club has many distinctly Modern features to it. The exterior is almost completely cover in a glass curtain wall, affording swiping views of the golf course. We also a very Mies-ian exposed structure which has been painted a flat black. This element echoes Mies van der Rohe's design for the Seagram's Building in New York City, and does so rather elegantly. However, it is the roof that is the really striking element to this design, and the element that sets it apart from most other Modern architecture.
   The accordion roof of the Country Club is an element that we see echoed in the work of Donald Wexler in Palm Springs, and an element that was commonly used in Googie Architecture, a subcategory of Modern architecture. (To read more on Googie architecture, please click the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googie_architecture) Donald Wexler did several designs in the Modern architectural Mecca of Palm Springs, CA., many of which have become icons of the Mid-Century Modern movement. Some of these iconic houses featured accordion roofs similar to the one on the Sylvan Hill Country Club.

Donald Wexler's prefab steel house with accordion roof, Palm Springs, 1959-1962

These designs, due largely to their graphic nature, became more or less, the features that Wexler was known for in the architecture community. As such, they have also become the graphic symbols of the Mid-Century Modern period. However, Branton's design has far more in common with the highly acclaimed design by Sise & Desbarats for the Mount Royal Park Pavilion in Montreal, Canada. The Mount Royal Pavilion has a base that is raised, just like the Country Club, and it also has the glass curtain wall surrounding the structure. The scale is very similar as well, which is most likely due to the similarity of use between the two structures. However there is a feature that separates Branton's accordion roof design from that of almost all others, its reveals.

Mount Royal Park Pavilion by Hazen Sise and Guy Desbarats in Montreal, Canada (1961)

    These reveals we see in Branton's design is a really interesting design element on the structure. The fact that the placement of the reveals is at the peaks, and not the valleys of the roof, creates the appearance of a series of chevrons opposed to an accordion roof. Having the reveals in such a place would mean they are not present for water drainage, and thus not really a functional element. However, the effect created by the stripes of light that pours from between the openings serves to visually break up the long facade of glass. So not only does the reveals give the building a distinctive look, they also serve to create more visual interest on the facade. Another function served by the reveals is to draw your eyes outward towards the golf course when you are standing inside. So while this element is not functionally necessary for the structure, it is needed for the aesthetic aspects it brings to the building.
   As we have seen the former Sylvan Hills Country Club not only stands out in North Little Rock, its connection and similarities to other great pieces of Modern architecture causes it to stand in the full canon of Modern architecture. Its reveals set it apart from its contemporaries and shows an innovation of design only seen in Arkansas. However, it is yet another significant piece of the story of Modern architecture that is unknown to the majority of the world, but Arkansas can look at it and smile. It truly is a gem of architecture in the natural state.

Additional photos of the Country Club:

Roof reveal from the inside.

Entrance to the Country Club

For more information on the buildings or architects mentioned above, please check out the following links:

Seagrams Building:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram_Building

Donald Wexler:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Wexler

Mount Royal Parc Pavilion:
http://www.lemontroyal.qc.ca/carte/en/html/Beaver-Lake--7.html

Fire Station Chic

    We are accustomed to seeing Modern architecture in places like down towns, college campus, or maybe even beside old major highways, but sometimes we find them in places that we least expect it. This is the case with this week's building. It is North Little Rock Fire Station No. 6. It sits at the intersection of Camp Robinson Road and Schaer Street in Levy, a small section of North Little Rock. Levy has never been a well-to-do area of North Little Rock. At its founding in 1892, Levy served mainly at a resting point for merchants going to Little Rock because they did not charge the high "over-night" fee that many Little Rock purveyors did. Levy was eventually annexed to North Little Rock in 1946. Levy had always been a blue collar area but when the construction of Interstate 40 cut it off from a great deal of North Little Rock, it took a turn for the worse. Levy is now an area of high crime and low employment. Things are starting to improve there but they are still not great. It is in this setting, in the shadow of the Interstate 40 overpass that we find this Modern beauty.
     The 1960's saw a great deal of building in North Little Rock. The established neighborhoods of Lakewood and Sherwood were significantly expanded and populations were steadily rising. It was during this time that many public service buildings were constructed. Fire Station No. 6 was among them. Fire Station No. 6 was designed by local architect Raymond Branton in 1964. Branton is also the architect for the former Sylvan Hills Country Clubhouse, now called the Greens at North Hills. While Branton's design for the fire station is not the high Mies-ian or Corbusier-ian Modern that we have been looking at, it is still unquestionably Modern and shows a great deal of innovation.

Structural Framework

     First lets look at the classically Modern elements of the design. Most notably we have the white concrete structure-work that frames the building. This idea of having the structure of the building exposed and apparent was one of the base principles of Modernism. We also have the flat roof of the Modern movement on this building as well as a complete lack of any unnecessary ornamentation. The entire composition of the exterior is all geometric massing, exposed structure, and floating planes. An interesting element here that we have seen in other Modern buildings, such as the Lee House No. 2 in New Canaan, CT, is the material massings. The center of the building is all glass on both front and back, almost like a glass box that was slid in between two masonry boxes. This creates a striking contrast between the middle and sides. The sides only have glass on the upper half of the eastern and western ends. This type of material massing is very similarly in the Lee House No. 2. It serves to separate the public from the private spaces, in this case the truck and equipment areas from the living quarters and offices.

Lee House No. 2 by John Black Lee in New Canaan, CT (1956)

     Now lets discuss the innovations and unique aspects of this building. First lets look at the material between the structural framework. We see that the infill between the framework columns and beams is concrete block. Now this may look like these concrete block walls are structural, but they are not. We know this because the joints between the blocks line up from top to bottom. This creates a lot of weakness in the walls, and should they have actually been supporting the structure, there would be significant cracking and breaking. The likely justification for the concrete blocks is for fire safety. It only makes sense to make a fire station fire proof. Another interesting and slightly innovative element to the fire station is the doors for the central bay. They are glass garage doors. These had only been used in one other building prior to this in the state. Dietrich Neyland used them in his design for the Arkansas Arts Center's first addition to provide lots of light and easy ventilation for the studio spaces. Branton is probably using them more for their stylish qualities rather than functional  here, but they complete the composition, so they are just as valid, and only marginally less innovative.

Glass Bay Door 

     The lesson that we should take away from Fire Station No. 6 is that Modern buildings can be anywhere and everywhere. They were functional as all types of buildings and where built in all sorts of areas. While the light of Levy's glory may be very dim, this Modern masterpiece shines bright all on its own.

For more information on the Lee House No.2, please refer to the following link:
http://www.preservationnation.org/travel-and-sites/sites/northeast-region/new-canaan-ct/sites/lee-house-2.html