BACK IN GRAY

 Author's note: Hello, folks, it's been quite a while. Back in 2020, already adrift in the midst of Covid, I became so disgusted with Google's annoying retool of the Blogspot interface that I decided to take a break from blogging. After that I became distracted by starting in on a long-delayed writing project, The Crookedest House, my self-described "book about architecture disguised as a memoir". Now that I've finished the manuscript, I'll keep you posted on when and how you can get it when it's published.

A former painted lady—now just a gray lady.

In the meantime, though, I've missed exercising this platform for commentary, especially in light of the current chaos in our own government, not to mention the rising chaos everywhere else in the world. Of course, I'm an essayist on architecture and not a political columnist, but in times like these it's hard not to feel like crying out about things beyond the realm of design. So forgive me if that occasionally happens.

Accordingly, I'll segue into a now long-running trend that betrays America's unhappiness with itself in the past few decades. Perhaps you've guessed it already. Drive down any street and you'll notice one thing: Gray. Houses are gray, cars are gray. There's no doubt in my mind that this is a reflection of the national psyche—a long, drawn-out, and almost literal fading of the optimism we felt coming out of the Space Age.

Parking area at Mt. Hood, Oregon, around 1959—
the zenith of automotive two-tone and three-tone
paint jobs, and not coincidentally, of American
optimism. (Image:Reddit/The Way We Were).

Younger readers among you might not even be aware of this onetime American exuberance, which is a sad thing in itself. I'll have to go back even long before my own time to give you some idea what I'm talking about. Beginning in the 1950s, with a booming economy and fresh credentials as the nation that saved Europe in the Second World War, Americans felt they could do no wrong, and they weren't shy about saying so. Take a look at some of our modern architecture, and you'll see what I mean. Even more telling, take a look at the outrageously styled and kaleidoscopically colored American automobiles of that era, which made parking lots resemble huge boxes of pastel-colored candies. 

No, this isn't a staged shot—it's a line of cars, every one
of them painted in some variation of gray, just as I
found them in a parking garage.

Compare that with the usual street scene of today: Dreary lines of dull black, white, and grey cars as far as the eye can see. It's a level of boredom that would have dismayed even Henry Ford, who knew that while his Tin Lizzies could only be had in black, other manufacturers would be glad to supply Americans with colorful cars at a higher price.

Yet when I went car-shopping a few years ago, I found that the vast majority of color choices were limited to black, white, or endless permutations of gray or silver. 

As both real estate brokers and automakers are quick to point out, they aren't creating these trends, but rather are responding to them—from which it's reasonable to conclude that today, the American psyche no longer has much appetite for joyful expression. And no wonder: this literal darkening of the soul takes place as Americans are fed a steady diet of gloom, doom, and fear of the Other. At the same time, we continue to shrink from our longtime leadership as a small-d democratic light in the world, at a time when the world desperately needs it. It's a decline that's purely self-inflicted, and it's born of distinctly un-American fear rather than our usual American optimism. The drab thundercloud tones we now see all around us only mirror that foreboding.

During the late Fifties and early Sixties, aspirational forms like this were routine in buildings
ranging from the monumental to the mundane—this is the Findlay Oldsmobile dealership,
built in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1963. Image: Ken MacIntyre, Modtraveler.net