Midcentury Modern--Falling in Love Again

Modern Phoenix Week went by all too quickly, with activities, nostalgic slide shows, and lectures focused on Midcentury Modern homes in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area. It was amazing to see what people had done to put the retro back into their modern pads. But you don't have to splurge on a home designed by a famous fifties architect to enjoy modern living. Drive through fifties and sixties neighborhoods today in the southwest’s major cities and you expect to see kids on Firestone SuperCruiser bikes zipping by and Don Draper from the AMC series Mad Men pulling into the driveway. Tracts of modern homes, and ranch homes featuring modern elements, still dot the suburban landscape.

Photo: Di's father-in-law, Garth, proposing to Eileen about 60 years ago, in a desert setting about to boom in population.

Variations of the modern house existed in other parts of the country, to be sure. But the southwest cities found it easy to lure returning G.I.s with young families (along with a fair number of snow–weary northeastern suburbanites) to climate-controlled, single family tract homes nestled on large suburban lots, near shining new schools and sprawling shopping centers.

Suburbia boomed for two full decades. This was my world growing up--with one twist:

When I was a toddler, my Dad accepted an engineering job with the Department of Defense at Fort Huachuca, the Army’s largest Electronic Proving Ground, booming in the Cold War era for its own reasons. We moved from a new ranch house in suburban Scottsdale to very modern government housing on an old cavalry post. We planted roses and bedding plants, knowing they'd bloom for the family after us. It didn’t seem emotionally healthy to put down more roots than that--even so, Mom brought a spruce tree for the yard, transplanting it again and again as we moved to successively bigger houses with each of Dad’s promotions. The best was a flat-roofed modern house with decorative open cinder blocks surrounding a front courtyard. Of course, every house in the neighborhood looked just like ours--just painted a different color or with a reversed floor plan--with the same floor-to-ceiling glass living room wall and wood floors.

Above: A midcentury modern ranch house in Arizona.

Drones, satellites, and computers were a part of dinner conversation, but daily life “on post” was the military version of the idyllic Leave It To Beaver TV series. We’d leave early for the Sunday buffet at the Lakeside Officers’ Club, so I could plop down on floor pillows in the lounge and watch Bonanza and Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on the only color TV around (except for a Heathkit set built by Dad's friend and colleague, Chris). After dinner, I’d wander down to the lake and catch minnows in my hands, loving the feel of them tickling over my fingers as I released them back into the water. On clear nights, we’d go home and aim my little telescope up to the sky from our back porch, watching Sputnik--and later, Gemini capsules--orbiting Earth.

Listening in on adult cocktail-hour conversations was like watching an episode of Mad Men today. Bow-tied dads would be talking office politics, while moms in their patent leather high heels and sheath cocktail dresses chatted about new neighbors and the PTA. I still have Mom’s cocktail apron—a shimmering organza version of the cookie-baking apron, suitable for serving hors d’oeuvres and martinis. Of course, once in a while the topic would turn to whether or not the storage rooms off the indoor hallways of those places could be retrofitted as a suitable bomb shelter in the event of a Cuban-based missile attack. I was thinking NOT.

The San Diego Connection: Dad had a TDY (Temporary Duty) trip scheduled that was going to last most of the summer. We packed up the Impala and led a convoy of deuce-and-a-half trucks full of electronic equipment to San Diego, where Mom was stuck, but where I spent six glorious weeks either in the motel swimming pool or playing games with a gaggle of new friends whose dads were working on the same project. On weekends we'd sometimes tour new home subdivisions, spotted by their flags and signage designed to lure in young families like us.

My dream house as a child in the early Kennedy era was "Plan G" in a new San Diego subdivision called “View Northpoint,” a neighborhood I've been unable to find on the Internet or in GoogleMaps—I suspect it was swallowed up in its prime during the expansion of a local university some decades later. Plan G was the perfect house. Curving streets brought you up a hill to everything a modern home should offer: low-pitched roof angling skyward over an entryway with a bubble lamp pendant fixture, clerestory windows to show off the ceiling extending seamlessly from porch to interior, a sectioned wood room divider between the foyer and living room, mica mixed into the acoustic ceiling to add subtle sparkle, a breakfast bar, coppertone built-in appliances, and—best of all—a really huge picture window overlooking the bay. I sat cross-legged in the living room till darkness fell, the stars came out, and the city began to sparkle beneath us. I was not a happy camper when the real estate agent came to shoo us out so he could lock up the models.

I wanted my parents to move to San Diego. Our perfect life would be even more perfect there. And as far as I knew, none of the Soviet missiles were trained on San Diego. We all talked about how we loved Plan G—so what was the hold-up? I heard them talking one night about buying a cattle station in Australia and moving into a homestead.

I was just warming up to the idea of a pet Koala when Dad got a job offer he couldn’t refuse, and off we flew in the opposite direction, to Cold War era West Berlin. I tucked Plan G’s marketing brochure away in my suitcase; the perfect life would have to wait a while.

Photo: Di's Dad and Mom

at the Berlin Wall.

Partway into our eight years in Berlin, I realized the perfect life had merely changed continents. Still, I saved Plan G's floor plan in my hope chest well into adulthood.

I still like to muse over how I'd go about decorating Plan G now, if only I could find it again. After restoring its 1960s architectural features outside and in, I'd have to hit the retro shops for modern furniture (Danish teak? Hammary cherry tables with cylindrical aluminum legs?), and set them off with some Midcentury Modern wall art.

Of course, the color scheme would come from EyeDance Gallery's Retro Palette (left), taken from Midcentury Modern colors.

New versions of the old kitchen appliances would be the only logical choice (hmm...pink, turquoise, or coppertone?). But the most fun would be heading into that kitchen with the big box I rescued from Mom’s kitchen, full of cookbooks, candy thermometers, Pyrex, Revereware, blue cornflower patterned Corningware--and all those aprons.

Who says you can’t go home again?

Till next time!
Di & Shona

Be sure to see our latest wall art at http://www.eyedancegallery.com .