Neoclassical Revival in a Field of Green

So: I am researching Royal W. Lescher, a 20th century architect who takes credit for many landmark civic buildings in and around Phoenix.  I am building a case to stabilize a certain historic building that he designed in 1912.  

I am at a loss for uncovering personal background on Lescher. He was an architect the same period as Frank Lloyd Wright.  You can find out what cape Wright wore to a ground breaking ceremony but there is not one photograph of Lescher.   How can this be?  

He listened to his client.     

I did find some answers in a field of alfalfa on Tuesday.  Lily my 9 year old had an assignment in social studies.  Instead of trolling the internet I put on my Tevas, filled up my Nalgene bottle and we drove out to the vast fields of agriculture that is a minutes' drive from Serbin Studio.  We pulled off into a dirt entry by a canal with a head gate.  There was an old tire covered in bird drops under a gigantic shade tree that had branches like a living room touching the dirt.  Lily had on her plaid Bermudas and tan tiny cowgirl boots. We tromped along the densely packed field of green looking for an opening to find some black birds.  Red winged black birds are a great way to learn about social networking.  The field acted like an ocean in a dry desert. The wind would push out pockets of cool earthy breaths of air. We sat and waited on a dry cracked piece of ground and were surrounded by green stalks.  We could hear the chucks and konk-la-wees of the red winged blackbirds calling to each other.

A couple birds flew overhead and I had my camera aimed and ready.  The General and a couple of lieutenants with bright red epaulets flew overhead to check us out.  Lily found a black feather on the cracked brown earth.  It is a good day when you can stop and hide in a field of green.

Royal could have stopped on this same dirt road to add more fluid to his sputtering Model T Ford.  He could have taken his leather bound journal and walked into the field searching for a cool place to sit.  Black birds have a way of answering questions when designing something so rigid like a courthouse, where gravitas is expected.

Neoclassical Revival Style is what he chose for the courthouse.  This means throwing out fancy details that don't do anything but look cute.  Fancy cherubs hide the structure and pure lines of how the building is supported.   Lescher was about simplicity and truth, wanting to express only what was needed.

 Simple ideas are beautiful.

Buckeye Mainstreet Coalition

I initially asked to be on the Buckeye Mainstreet Coalition on my birthday February 8th of 2011.  It has been a fun ride being a member of the Coalition.  Why do I like being a part of this group?

They get stuff done.  

It is like cooking with my daughter Lily in the kitchen you know.  I have made breaded chicken a million times and I am really good at it.  When she wants to help she gets really excited and wants to help and I just want to do it all myself to avoid the messes.  I am so much faster and neater than her. She will sprinkle flour on the floor and counter and cabinets. There will be flour in the drawers.   She pats the chicken too much and it drives me crazy.  Well I just described how it is when someone like me joins a group of well established friends.  I get so excited that I want to help.  I have learned to hush.

In a short amount of time our Coalition has accomplished many great things and continues to spin out new ideas for Historic Buckeye.  I am helping with the chicken.  It is so awesome helping with the chicken!  I cannot even tell you how good it is.

Historic Buckeye, Arizona

The aerial above is our main focus.  The road going north/south is Miller Avenue and the road going east/west is Monroe Avenue.  The objective for Mainstreet is to work closely with the Town of Buckeye and the Buckeye community to bring a flow of commerce to Historic Buckeye.  We want to celebrate the agricultural and western spirit that says "Buckeye is Open for Business!"  That's Mayor Jackie Meck's campaign.

Our second Design Initiative got approved last night at the Buckeye Council Meeting.  This project is a gateway for Monroe Avenue.

Miller + Jackson Gateway - Design Initiative, Buckeye Mainstreet Coalition

The spot that is getting the new gateway is the purple zone.  It is a manufactured home park along a route where hundreds of vehicular traffic flow to and from to the Equestrian Center to the South on Hazen Avenue.  We want to encourage drivers to hang a right once they get to Monroe. See the arrows!

Existing conditions of Miller and Jackson.

Proposed design intent.

We are proposing painted block with windows of ventilation.

I hope this gateway not only provides a welcome point of entry for Monroe Avenue but also a sense of pride for the ones who live in this neighborhood.

So Verlyne Meck said I get my boots after two years. Stoked.

Angus, Scotland: Glamis Castle

The Queen, photographed in July 1939 by Cecil Beaton.

So why am I now reading The Queen Mother, The Official Biography? Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes Lyon, the ninth child of Lord and Lady Glamis is my latest inspiration. She was a party girl who was born at the end of the Victorian era and shimmied in the 1920's till sometimes 3am! She had a crazy sense of humor that helped soften the often stoic Royal family.  She was also Scottish which I am as well. My grandfather Vassar Gregory was Scottish, he is smiling at me in a black and white photo above my desk.

I love that Elizabeth was well taken care of throughout her life, like one continuous red carpet extending 12 feet in front of her at all times.  She is also in the tiny hair club.  So far in the book Elizabeth's letters glow with rapture when she spends time at Glamis.  Even after marrying Bertie she seems to get recharged after staying in the suite at Glamis and getting away from the regimented Balmoral, the country castle that Queen Elizabeth II retreats to.

So far, I am at Chapter 7 of the Biography, Birth of a Princess 1925-1927.  The baby princess is none other than the future Queen Elizabeth II of England, my other inspiration who has reigned the Commonwealth of Nations for the last 60 years.  So this biography is about today's Queen's mother.  I have already read about Queen Elizabeth II so I am working my way backwards.

Young Elizabeth grew up living between Glamis Castle and St. Paul's Waldenbury.  Not a bad plan! I love to look these places up while reading.  So far in the book Elizabeth's letters glow with rapture when she spends time at Glamis.  Even after marrying Prince Bertie she seems to get recharged after staying in the suite at Glamis and getting away from the regimented Balmoral, the country castle that Queen Elizabeth II retreats to.

The Strathmores, Elizabeth's parents had people over to Glamis for hunting parties seasonally. I am not talking about a party of eight either, back in 1903 Elizabeth's grandparents invited "...571 children from five schools in the neighborhood to tea, sports and a conjuring show, followed by fireworks..."   So I am going overboard on Eva and Lily's birthday parties this year.  Why not?  I could at least have a conjuring show.

  When I come across statements like this I usually read it about 3 times:

"A house party at Glamis was always exhilarating, an informal, ever moving tableau with a panoply of entertainments - tennis, cricket, shooting, walking in the evenings, dressing up, charades, dancing, cards and singing around the piano." The Queen Mother, The Official Biography, William Shawcross, 2009, pg. 118.

Anyone who had the lucky fortune of staying at Glamis, and it sounds like there were many, remarked "Everything at Glamis was beautiful, perfect.  Being there was like living in a Van Dyck picture.  Time, and the gossiping, junketing world, stood still. But the magic gripped us all."  The Queen Mother, The Official Biography, William Shawcross, 2009, pg. 119.

Glamis was a hunting lodge that got transformed into a castle in the fifteenth century.  Today there is probably a turn table playing Bob Marley echoing in a stone archival library as a docent dusts Elizabeth's letters and memoirs.  I would love to wander the grounds and of course traipse every room inside the castle. I love knowing that this place exists!  The video below is wonderful except for the sinister background music.   Who died?

Vail, Arizona: Colossal Cave Mountain Park

The visitor center at Colossal Cave overlooked the desert valley and framed it so beautifully.

The first thing the tour guide told our group was how the Native Americans, the founders of Colossal Cave only hung out in the entry crawl spaces.  Natives simply didn't have the light source to see any further.  Remnants from these times were pottery and blackened rock above camp fire burn outs. The black soot was about 12 inches *Ok...16 inches* from the rock below so I guess they were either really short or cooking quail was more fun lying on their chest, I don't know.   No seriously, they used the cave to store things that they wanted to keep cool. 

My essentials I wanted to keep cool were Chanel lipstick, Precise Rolling Ball Pilot pens and a tiny green notepad *grid lined* just in case a ghost wanted to tell me where the money was hidden.  It is kind of incredible to think early Natives were only exploring 3 percent of this cave.  They had no clue that the sulpher etched cavern had great rooms, a lake and narrow craggy bottomless shafts.  

I did learn the difference between a stalagmite which is formed in limestone caves from the ground up and "mite" knock you in the knees if you are not paying attention.  Stalactites grow in "tite" clusters from the ceiling.

No, this is not me.  Now just stop it!  This 40"x36" hand painted 1950's photo in the ever so cool stone gift shop adjacent to the Colossal Cave entry.  

It was pitch black once inside except for light from the guide's flash light.  It smelled like petrified skunk, dirt and tossed with nasty cologne. The guide pointed out a boarded up crawl space way up high that used to be a shaft formed by  Civilian Conservation Corps in the mid-1930's.  

Once on the parking lot which was on top of the cave I found the asphalt cover that hid the mine shaft.  I could imagine sunlight streaking into the dark cavern and miners lowering in massive hunks of flagstone to the others who were shoving their used up cigarette butts into the wet and chunky grout to pave the future pathway for people of the future like us.

The entry to Colossal Cave.   

A Tale of The Chapel of St. Ignatius

I visited this Chapel last month on vacation in Washington State. I was reading a worn out paper epistle with softened corners called Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.  The reading requires thinking and a bit of Googling to look up fancy language every 2 minutes.

It was necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could begin, and when he did begin, he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been six feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen spluttering extensively.

 I liked that bit about how Joe Gargery, Pip's blacksmith Uncle who brought him up 'by hand' made an attempt to learn how to write while Pip went away to establish himself.  When Pip left, Joe could barely put two words together in a sentence.  Just like a character in a classic or an architectural wonder, you really have to read the book cover to cover to appreciate how the idea or person came into being.

It would have been necessary for Biddy, Joe's wife's attendant and a bit of an undercurrent character in Great Expectations, to sit in the curving bench in front of the Altar of the Chapel while Pip and Joe investigate every hand-textured surface.  She would be reading her own Bible brought from her humble home.  She wouldn't have paid much attention to the space thinking it was a bunch of overcooked religious fodder.  She would be reading some verse which has "...various specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves." 

If Joe and Pip from Great Expectations we standing in front of these glass jars Joe would start by saying, "These r holy ole used fur sumfin I dont no but kin oynle gess it to be Three Rums."  Pip would look around to see if Mr. Pumblechook was standing behind a wall listening to his Uncle's butchered use of  the English language.  Pip would pick up Joe's worn out hat that he set on top of the steel cantilevered shelf.  The lifeless chain reminds Pip of  Magwitch, the Convict's ankle chain that he files away at.

A solitary candle reminds Pip of Estella, the extraordinary bird carrying a candle to light the gloomy damp corridor in Miss Havisham's Satis House.

If Estella was here she wouldn't be inside with Joe and Pip, she would be sitting on this stone bench knitting.  After finishing a row, she would glance up quickly at how the hand carved Alaskan yellow cedar door sets neatly in a bronze frame and is set flush within the concrete wall. *that wasn't so bad now was it?*    She is thinking of how she is going to chuck Pip's mini-van keys into the reflecting pond.  She would be thinking how this building reminds her of the Churches she visited during her summer holiday in Rome.  Estella would be reveling in the her knowledge that it was her who gave Steven Holl, the award winning Architect the insight to cast the two bronze bells for the Chapel in the world -famous bell foundry of Paccard-Fonderie de Cloches, near her fashionable crib near Annecy-le-Vieux, France.

Pip would need a triple shot of espresso to warm him from "...the cold shivery mist..."  The entourage of characters would step into Stumptown Coffee Roasters a quick walk from the Chapel.
Pip's dear old chap Herbert would greet them all warmly as he was prepares a caffeinated brew.  Joe ordered the House Blend naturally and was "...tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield a crowbar or sledge hammer" as he searched for the half and half.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters

So I am trying to get into A Tale of Two Cities and I don't get it yet.  

Florence, Arizona: Main Street Study

The thing about Florence, Arizona is that it is close enough for a day trip.

  

To the north-west is a high, extensive plain.  To the south and trending east are the  usual ranges of low, volcanic and granite mountains, while across to the south the eye can discern the far outline of the Picacho Peak.  Hinton, J. Richard, Handbook to Arizona 1877.

Florence has the oldest functioning Arizona State Prison complex.  I bought a birthday card for my nephew at the only place that was open, The Prison Outlet Store full of handmade crafts made from inmates .  If I had a two story white art gallery with a 48 inch white pedestal I would have bought this sadistic, naughty looking clown head sculpture that was no bigger than a bar of soap.  

Chamber of Commerce, 1890 Conrad Brunenkant Building, Florence, Arizona

Why didn't they paint the space between like "...malachite, silver and copper, which sparkle in the sun brighter than emeralds."  Florence is close enough to the "...Silver King mine that was discovered by four farmers Reagan, Copeland, Mason, and Long who were bringing copper ore from the Globe mine which they had previously discovered."  Hinton, J. Richard, Handbook to Arizona 1877.

It was a cool 118 degrees at high noon so I chose to walk on the shady side.

Mauk Building 1925,  Florence, Arizona. Designed by Phoenix Architect and movie house mogul, George Mauk 

I really love this building in so many ways. When air conditioning is king, I can appreciate a good solid marquee, probably because the architect George Mauk from Phoenix, was also a movie house mogul.  The clerestory window is tighter in length than the marquee which helps to bring the eye upward.  I also like how the two mullions that divide it in three segments are thicker than the secondary thin sized mullions. 

Underside of the marquee of Mauk Building 1925,  Florence, Arizona. 

John Nicholas Saloon and Beer Hall 1886, Florence, Arizona

John Nicholas Saloon and Beer Hall 1886, Florence, Arizona

The saloon building works in terms of holding your attention.  The window proportions hit the mark with the height of the building.  The frieze on top is intricate and has a gradual rhythm that brings your eye to the flat arch brick work over the windows.  The relief work of the brick over the windows sends your eye pin balling upwards.  The dusty teal accents against the oldest standing Florence fired brick building is arresting.

Light Meter

Eastman Cotton Gin, Miller Road and Baseline, Buckeye, Arizona

This is what I thought was beautiful this morning at 5:41am today.  Well the only time to wash and use a blow dryer on my tiny hair is about 4:00am anyhow.  It is extreme heat these days in the desert.  I was waiting at the entry gate of the Gin so that my Father in Law, Dr. Edward DuBrow and his photography chum Ken Clemmer could have access to take some photos before the sun came up.

I always enjoy watching Ed take photos. He is strict with the schedule.  You have to capture the subject that you photographing before the sun comes up. That is it.  He is an extremely timely guy.  He had lots of his fancy expensive cameras with black and white film loaded.

Ken and Ed went under the fence with their heavy bag of gear and set up the tripod.  We felt so full of ourselves starting before the authority showed up to open the gate. But look at the light and the what the clouds were doing today!  

There is Ken Clemmer. Ken and Ed have been friends for 20 years and have shared many photographing adventures. Ken has a full on dark room.  Ken was in charge of taking digital colored photos while Ed stuck with the black and white film.  

Right now while Dr. DuBrow is seeing his patients, I am sure he has a burning excitement to sit over his light table with his magnifying glass to check out the work.

That was me in my checks, jeans and boots. Ken said I looked mean!