We've all experienced it. You might call it cultural vertigo or architectural schizophrenia. You've walked into a restaurant, or even just strolled down a seemingly mundane street, and you feel a weird sense of pseudo-déjà vu. It evokes some other place, perhaps not a place you have visited, but place that you have visited vicariously through in-flight magazines or films set in exotic locales. But … something isn't quite right. The worn clapboard siding shouts Cape Cod, circa 1880, and the guy greeting you wears a nametag reading Ahab … but you're in Minneapolis, or Denver, or Toronto, in the 21st century.
It's a theme park world, after all. Architecture based on nostalgia and simulation, though certainly not a new phenomenon, seems to be a growing trend in commercial and residential developments in the United States, to the delight of many consumers and to the dismay of historians and architectural critics. As Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for The Los Angeles Times once wrote about the Las Vegas hotel and casino complex New York, New York, "history and time are suspended, as if the city were dipped in formaldehyde." Often, though, the re-creation goes beyond mere suspension of history and time, and splices together distinct locales, events and cultures, assembling an entirely new version of reality.
Of course Las Vegas didn't start it, and neither did Disney, another major culprit. Many of the major architectural styles of the 19th century could even be seen as themed, contrived attempts to evoke a different time and place—Gothic Revival, Richardsonian Romanesque.
But now the trend is downright surreal. From coast to coast, you can walk into Johnny Rocket's and pretend you're in a Norman Rockwell-approved diner; stroll into a Buca di Beppo outlet and imagine you have stepped into a nice 1950s-era Italian American joint, where the sauce comes from cans and the proprietor doesn't know Tuscany from Tucson; drive the jalopy down to Famous Dave's Rib Shack, where you order from the chalkboard menu spelled out in seemingly folksy language, and, if you're lucky, the fake El train may rumble overhead. Prefer a Down Under experience? Outback Steakhouse. An Up North experience? Timberlodge Steakhouse. South Florida? Joe's Crab Shack.
You get the point. Place has been reduced to stereotype, culture to caricature, nostalgia to a commodity. And it works. Simulacrum sells.
Architecture constantly references past styles and organic forms; it is an endeavor that inherently mixes metaphor and pure function. And in some cases, the attempts to evoke a past time or an distant locale is completely understandable, as in the construction of new buildings within historic districts, or a Buddhist temple in Chicago. The former is necessary given the context; the latter may not fit its environs aesthetically, but its intent is benign, as it sympathetically and successfully reflects its cultural roots and innate function.
Fake architecture tends to fit into two categories: the seemingly authentic and the obviously fake. For the structures in the latter category, the overall effect is more campy than convincingly genuine. Las Vegas's ersatz Venice, Egypt, New York or Paris come to mind; these are mishmashed amalgamations of entire cultures, a greatest hits parade of landmarks and stereotypes that few would mistake for their authentic counterparts. In her seminal essay "Notes On Camp," Susan Sontag says that "camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of 'style' over 'content,' 'aesthetics' over 'morality,' of irony over tragedy." Vegas and Disney epitomize camp architecture, presenting their false facades with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge approach.
Themed restaurants have a bit of this sensibility, but also strive to appear authentic, at least on the most fundamental level. Applebee's seems to think that it really is your friendly neighborhood restaurant, a nice little joint owned by the family down the block. Johnny Rocket's purports to be a genuine diner—the company's web site boasts that patrons "enjoy an All-American diner look and feel, servers who know the secret behind getting ketchup out of the bottle, tabletop jukeboxes that belt out tunes for a nickel and authentic décor [emphasis added]."
But the theme park landscape extends far beyond the malls, amusement parks and restaurants that abut the interstate. The most striking examples of delusional fake architecture are more subtle.
Marceline, Missouri and Fort Collins, Colorado were the models for Disney's Main Street, USA area of its theme parks, but now these towns and others are beginning to resemble theme parks themselves. In both of these cities, historic downtown areas that were neglected and derelict in the 1980s are now postcard-perfect landscapes, replete with old-fashioned lighting, American flags and other imagery of the small town of collective nostalgia. According to The New York Times, Marceline's civic leaders have pinned their hopes for reviving the town's struggling economy on revitalization of the quaint downtown. But the effort goes beyond mere sidewalk-fixing and into mimicry—the town's main street, Kansas Avenue, was re-named Main Street, USA. It is no longer the main street for a working town, a place where people buy groceries or a hammer; it has been transformed into a Norman Rockwell painting, in effect, with the intent of attracting nostalgic tourists, and the effect of alienating some town residents who resent the theme park imitation.
Remembering history is important, of course, and it is tragic when any small town's main street becomes a desolate landscape of boarded shops. Preserving buildings, therefore, maintains identity, sense of place and collective recollection of our past.
But when evolution and historical context are erased, edited or changed for the sake of profit or pride, sense of place and knowledge of history lose out. Part of the charm of any old neighborhood is the wear and tear of the buildings and the unique ways in which the buildings interact with their environment and with each other. One can sense the dynamics of the passage of time and changing social conditions. Preservation based on a surface image alone may save a building, but it destroys the past. And reproduction architecture—by definition an exercise in creating fake history—is even more disconcerting as it forms an illusion with even less basis in reality.
After visiting Disneyland, the author Umberto Eco commented that "the pleasure of imitation, as the ancients knew, is one of the most innate in the human spirit; but here we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that the imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it." So it goes with other forms of phony, themed architecture. The restaurants, hotels, communities and other buildings that strive to fit a certain archetype more often present a dumbed-down version. It's not an homage; it's a mockery.
Doug Mack lives in Minneapolis, birthplace of Famous Dave's Barbeque Shack and Buca di Beppo. Send St. Patrick's Day toasts and other correspondence to doug@professoryeti.com.
