COVER STORY Photo by Star Foreman
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Chris Nich COVER STORY o l s ' p a ssion for a a quest to d o c u ment and ll things bowling Along his Powers, wway, he met thepi reserve our bowllei d him on influential ho, in the 1950s, conic architect Gong past. exhibit "B Googie-style bowhelped to design rdon 1954-196owlarama: Califo ling palaces. And the rnia Bowli 4" was bo ng Archittehe rn. cture
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Photo by Star Foreman
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COVER STORY Chris Nichols, curator of “Bowlarama,” grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and visited Covina Bowl often. As the author of Los Angeles magazine’s popular “Ask Chris” column, Nichols covers the pop culture of the sprawling metropolis, giving his readers a historical perspective on the city he loves. A long-time member of the Los Angeles Conservancy, which strives to preserve the architectural treasures of the city, Nichols is a member and former chairman of its Modern Committee. For some time Nichols had been keenly aware of the disappearing Googie bowling centers. He decided to begin documenting the history of what he considers a “lost world of extreme design.” He pitched the idea to Tibbie Dunbar, executive director of the Architecture + Design Museum, who quickly got approval for the show from her board. “I think it’s a period of architecture that has been forgotten,” says Dunbar. “I’m astounded that these bowling centers were torn down. What a shame that they’re not here.” A persuasive Nichols was able to secure sponsorship for the exhibit from Bowlmor AMF, Pinz Bowling Center, International Bowling Industry magazine and the Bowling Centers of Southern California. Nichols began assembling the
exhibit in December 2013, pulling it together in just a few months with the help of friends and fellow collectors of bowling center memorabilia. The exhibit opened on April 11, 2014 and ran for a month. “Chris wanted to do something while Gordon Powers was still alive, so this had to happen fast,” Dunbar says, referring to a pre-eminent Googie designer. “This show is sort of a teaser. I hope that we can do a larger exhibit in the future.”
Cocktail Kitsch and Matchbook Covers The main room of the exhibit was dominated by bowling center relics rescued by Nichols and his colleagues. On one wall was a giant letter ‘A’ from the outdoor sign of Arena Bowl in South Gate, CA. In the center of the room were a Brunswick Gold Crown ball return and telescore scoring table from the now-gone Hollywood Star Lanes, where scenes for the cult film The Big Lebowski were shot. The other walls are adorned with kitschy Tiki-style cocktail lounge decorations, a screen projecting a 1958 Brunswick promotional film, and reproductions of period matchbook covers from dozens of bowling centers. Alan Hess, an architect and Googie historian and the author of Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture (2004), provided some of the photographs for the exhibit. He explains the Googie style as an expression of the Space Age optimism of the time, when technology and American energy seemed to be making the dreams of the future come true. In an interview on Smithsonian.com, Hess said, “I really feel that Googie made the future accessible to everyone. One of the key things about Googie architecture was that it wasn’t custom houses for wealthy people— it was for coffee shops, gas stations, car washes, banks...the average buildings of everyday life that people of that period used and lived in. And it brought that spirit of the modern age to their daily lives.”
Designed by Master Architects Southern California had long been a fountainhead of Modernist architecture, and home to such influential architects as Rudolf Schindler, Richard Neutra and John Lautner. While Los Angeles’s modern residential architecture is worldrenowned, many of the city’s more flamboyant commercial and civic buildings were also shaped by leading Modernist architects. With the boom in bowling, quite a few Los Angeles architects took advantage of the opportunity to lend their talents to the creation of a type 26
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COVER STORY modern architect. Most prolific among these bowling center architects was the Long Beach-based firm of Powers, Daly and DeRosa, which designed more than 50 centers across California and many more throughout the country. Gordon Powers, now 98, attended the opening of Bowlarama and talked with visitors about the extraordinary period that his firm played a major role in defining. In 1952, “AMF went with a guy that invented the automatic pinspotter,” recalled Powers. “They got ahold of me to certify an alley in Long Beach, that the floor would take their machine. I figured it out and it did.” It was the beginning of a profitable relationship for both firms. “Bowling was coming up like mad,” Powers said. “When their vice-president got a lead, he’d call me. He’d sell the machines and I’d sell the architecture.” Powers’ partner Pat DeRosa was perhaps the biggest influence on the classic Googie bowling center. “Pat did all the design of the front elevation of the building. That was his forte,” Powers reported. “I ran the business and did the design of the floor plan to make it work.” Covina Bowl is one of Powers, Daly and DeRosa’s best-known designs. It was designed with an Egyptian theme, using a huge bisected pyramid that forms the roof over the entrance as the unifying element. Inside the center was the Pyramid Room, which hosted top musical acts from Liberace to the Smothers Brothers. Another DeRosa project, Futurama Lanes in San Jose, CA, boasted the Persian-influenced Magic Carpet Room. It was a silky, jeweled fantasy harem with 470,000 beads strung overhead. The “Bowlarama” exhibit also highlighted the work of other top architects of the era, including: n Edward Killingsworth, best known for his award-winning Case Study Houses of the 1950s. He created the crisp, elegant design for Red Fox Lanes in Long Beach. n A. Quincy Jones, known for his innovative work with housing tracts. His design for South Bay Bowling Center in Redondo Beach featured a plush cocktail lounge with windows looking out onto the lanes. This predated by decades the current trend to bars amid the lanes. n Paul Revere Williams, a pioneering African-American architect who designed movie star homes for Tyrone Power and Lucille Ball and an iconic remodel of the Beverly Hills Hotel. He also designed Arrowhead Bowl in the more prosaic environs of San Bernardino.
Where Have All the Googies Gone? “Bowlarama” was a bittersweet appreciation of an American institution that has been decimated by changing tastes, neglect and outright vandalism. In 2009 an episode of the reality TV show Human Wrecking Balls delighted in the destruction of the former Southwest Bowl center in south Los Angeles. Nichols was horrified at the bizarre spectacle. "I screamed...as they tore apart the original oak bowling ball cases, smashed balls into the brick and leaped through the trophy case, but when [show participant] Paul Pumphrey drop kicked the original 1957 pink-and-blue steel and neon sign off the roof, I lost it," he blogged at the time. Not many of the 12,000 classic centers are still extant, and few of those are still in use. Nichols and others in the preservation community are doing what they can 28
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to save them and their history. In the future, Nichols hopes to mount a larger exhibition and publish a book about the Googie bowling centers. In the meantime, for the price of a game, plus shoe rental, you can still experience first-hand the glory that was Googie. Nichols lists the following among the remaining jewels of Southern California bowling architecture: u Bay Shore Lanes 234 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica u Bowlium 4666 Holt Blvd., Montclair u Covina Bowl 1060 San Bernardino Rd., Covina u Friendly Hills Lanes 15545 Whittier Blvd., Whittier u Linbrook Bowl 201 S. Brookhurst, Anaheim u Mar Vista Lanes 12125 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles u Palos Verdes Bowl 24600 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance u Pinz 12655 Ventura Blvd., Studio City u Shatto 39 Lanes 3255 W. 4th St., Los Angeles u Zodo’s 5925 Calle Real, Goleta ❖
Robert Sax is a writer and PR consultant in Los Angeles. He grew up in Toronto, Canada, the home of five-pin bowling.