#475/Lost Raleigh: Mary Ruffin Hanbury + Ian Dunn + Max Bond: Brian Goldstein + Jeweler Sarah Hill + Musical Guest Karen Myatt

USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

This episode of U.S. Modernist Radio explores the intersection of architectural history, design, and culture through several distinct lenses. The hosts

Key takeaways

• Mary Ruffin Hanbury and Ian Dunn authored 'Lost Raleigh' to document the city's vanished architectural landmarks.
• The News and Observer photograph collection in North Carolina contains an estimated 5 million images spanning 1938 to 2007.

Main topics

• Architectural preservation in Raleigh
• Life and work of Max Bond Jr.

Notable quotes

Mama don't allow no architecture around here.

Conclusion

A poignant exploration of how design and art define our cultural ident

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) Hi, I'm Peter MacKeith, co-author of Out There, and you are listening to U.S. Modernist Radio. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Speaker 8 (0:15) Oh, I don't care what mama don't allow, gonna draw mine modern anyhow. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Speaker 7 (0:23) Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world. I'm Tom Guild. Right here in Raleigh, North Carolina, like every town, there are buildings. mostly lost the history. But not every town has a book. Raleigh has one, though, and today in the studio, we'll talk about that book with preservationist Mary Ruffin Hanbury and Ian Dunn. Then author Brian Goldstein tracks the work of architect Max Bond across three continents. Sarah Hill explores modernist jewelry. And later, it's our musical guest, Karen Myatt from Toronto. And now, sharing the secrets of our online library. Mr. Modernism, George Smart. Hey, thanks, Tom. Speaker 8 (1:17) We've been proudly scanning architecture and design magazines since 2013, with nearly 6 million pages so far. These magazines were in attics and basements and storage units, in boxes, some of them wet, and climate control that gave up during the Bush 1 years. Nobody had opened any of them for decades, and let's be honest, they're not as rare as we think. Many libraries have copies. But now, you and everyone else in the world has access too, as all these scans are text-searchable and free to access at usmodernist.org. At 3 in the morning our time, we're helping a student in Australia. At 11 a.m., we're helping a homeowner in Abilene, Texas, find resources to renovate a nearly dead 1954 modernist house. At 4 p.m., we're helping a granddaughter document the work of her architect grandfather. There's no login, no paywall, no cookies, solemnly assuring privacy while auctioning you to 11 ad networks. If you stack those pages up, you get a column 1,800 feet tall, which is taller than any building most of these magazines ever covered. If you lay them end to end, you'd get from New York to France. About 3,400 miles of drawings, floor plans, editorials, obituaries, and advertisements going back to the Speaker 7 (2:37) 1880s. Here's what you'll discover. Nearly complete runs of architectural record and progressive architecture, plus really old titles like American Architect and Building News, printed back when architects still wore hats. You'll get Dwell, Atomic Ranch, you know, the ones Speaker 8 (2:54) on Speaker 7 (2:55) your coffee table right now. AIA National Publications, plus chapter archives from almost all 50 states. Abandon architecture podcasts Speaker 8 (3:04) and blogs and websites. Because the internet rots faster than paper, and no one seems to want to talk about it. Speaker 7 (3:11) And the ads in those magazines are an incredible resource. If you're restoring a mid-century or any old house, somewhere in there is a full-page spread for a kitchen appliance that promises to change your marriage. It will not. The AIA gave us Speaker 8 (3:27) about 700,000 pages. The Smithsonian, universities, museums, and architects shipped dozens, if not hundreds, of boxes right to my house. Children of mid-century architects packed up their father's collections and mailed them to North Carolina. Just on faith, we'd do right by them. I really can't thank everybody enough, but I'll keep trying. U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neutra's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs and six other houses in California. By the E. Fay Jones Conservancy, preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in northwest Arkansas, efayjonesconservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs. Speaker 7 (4:22) Raleigh, North Carolina has been in the top ten cities for quality of life for decades. Cranes and construction crews are as familiar a sight as the old Oaks lining its streets, hence our town's nickname, the City of Oaks. Everyone's moving here, and like many cities, teardowns are the cost of progress. Most of the new projects are great, and most of the destroyed buildings, well, their time had come. But not all of them. Today, we'll remember modernist buildings and houses long gone with Mary Ruffin Hanbury, a historic preservation consultant, and Ian Dunn, an archivist and local historian at the State Archives of North Carolina. Ian and Mary Ruffin are the authors of Lost Raleigh, exploring the Oak City's architectural history. Welcome to the show, Mary Ruffin and Ian. Thank you. Speaker 8 (5:12) Ian. Your big project with the North Carolina Archives is the processing of the News and Observer photograph collection. It's one of the largest holdings they have. Why is that collection so important, and how large is it? Speaker 4 (5:26) That collection is absolutely massive. I think it has, by my estimation, over 5 million individual images, and it goes beyond negatives. It goes into prints. There's images on CDs. And it really is a daily diary of Raleigh from 1938 going all the way to, I think, in 2007. So it's an incredible span of time. It covers every day. And when did the state receive all this? They received it over a number of years in installments as the NNO would not have a use for it anymore and donate it. But we had a standing deal with them that they would donate as they... didn't need the negatives any longer. And how much room does this all take up? Quite a lot of space. The negatives obviously don't take up as much space as maybe the prints, but quite a lot. It is one of our biggest collections. Speaker 8 (6:22) I mean, like, how many square feet do you think it is? I'm trying to get a sense of the size of it. Square feet? Speaker 4 (6:29) I'd say it filled the average house. Really? Wow. Speaker 8 (6:32) Wow. That's crazy. That is a huge collection. Speaker 7 (6:36) Now, is there any plan Speaker 4 (6:37) to digitize any Speaker 7 (6:38) of that? We Speaker 4 (6:39) digitize it on a need basis. If somebody orders a print or a scan of a negative, then we keep that digital scan. But you don't proactively digitize? No, we're not going to digitize a debutante portrait from 1932. Damn! That's Speaker 8 (7:01) just what I was going to ask for. Until her Speaker 4 (7:03) obituary runs. Speaker 8 (7:04) Right. Now, Mary Ruffin, how did you and Ian decide to write this book on Lost Raleigh? Speaker 3 (7:10) Well, I had known Ian's predecessor, Carl Larson. And when Carl passed away at an early age, Ian stepped into some of his responsibilities at State Archives. And when I do research, a lot of times I want to see if the building has always looked the way it does now. And I would check over to the archives and say, do you have any pictures of such and such a building? Speaker 3 (7:34) Ian and I were emailing and we were talking about a building that was gone. And I said, someone should do a Lost Raleigh book. And he says, you know, that's funny. Carl was working on one when he died and had kind of the beginnings of a manuscript. And I said, oh. And so it was sort of, he kind of called my bluff because then it was sort of like, well, maybe we should finish it. And that's how we ended up doing it. We went to his brother's. his surviving family and got their blessing and their permission. And then we got to work. Speaker 4 (8:08) Tell us who Carl Larson was. Carl Larson was a Raleigh native, Raleigh historian. His father was also a historian, specifically a Civil War historian, also worked at the State Archives. So he's been steeped in history since a young age. But he started working at the State Archives, helping the A.B. unit identify unidentified pictures in the Albert Barden collection. And he started as a volunteer, but eventually got a part-time position with the archives. And about 2015, he began this manuscript that we've expanded. Speaker 8 (8:43) And Speaker 4 (8:44) then Speaker 8 (8:44) you and John Morris and Carl started a Speaker 4 (8:47) blog? John Morris started Goodnight Raleigh, and Carl came on board once he had seen the site and thought he could add to it. And John happily let him write for the site. Really, John Morris is how I met all of these people associated with the archives. Because I was biking down Hillsborough Street one day, and John Morris comes up behind me on his bike and hands me a Goodnight Raleigh card. because he saw a camera on my back. And he said, if you take pictures of Raleigh, we'd love to post them on the site. And he biked off. And I contacted him. The man of mystery. And I said, I'd be glad to, you know, offer some pictures. And that's how I found out about Carl. I didn't meet him. So I knew about Carl. And then in 2009, when they were redoing the roundabout on Pullen and Hillsborough, I saw Carl across the way photographing the construction process. And Speaker 2 (9:47) I thought, Speaker 4 (9:47) I'm going to go introduce myself because that's Carl Larson. And that's how we met. Wow. Speaker 8 (9:52) Wow. Speaker 4 (9:53) It's a small world. Good Night Raleigh, I Speaker 8 (9:55) know it as a Facebook page. Good Night Raleigh was a blog. It was one of the early canaries in the coal mine for alerting people about buildings that were in trouble, in danger of being destroyed. The Speaker 4 (10:07) bookstore. Speaker 8 (10:08) Yeah. The NC State bookstore, the Milton Small design that had the wonderful little concrete walkways, right, throughout that system. I think they're all gone now from the campus. There were a few other places, I thought. I think they're all gone now. They're all gone now. Yeah, they were really gorgeous. We've lost a number of important modernist structures in Raleigh. I want to ask you guys about a couple of Speaker 7 (10:32) them. Speaker 8 (10:32) The first one is the building for the Carolina Country Club. which was designed by Matthew Nowitzki and Milton Small. Tell me about that one. Speaker 3 (10:43) Well, you know, it's interesting. That was the third of four buildings on that site. Its immediate predecessor had a really horrible fire, and several people who worked at the country club who lived on site died in the fire. It was really pretty grisly. And it was, at the time, so far outside of the city limits, they didn't have water supply. It was really bad. But when they built the new one in 1948, it was Milton Small. He was working at the time with William Henley Dietrich, whose house is directly across the street. And Nowicki did the interiors. And also a guy named E.G. Thurlow did the landscaping. It was a real departure because the other ones were sort of very traditional in— Speaker 8 (11:24) Southern plantation style. Speaker 3 (11:25) Very much so. And this one had a lot of brick. and quarry stone and glass, so it was much more fire-resistant, which is actually something they were concerned about, given the previous one. But very much materials. You walked into a lounge that had a big fireplace. It almost is sort of Frank Lloyd Wright-ian, that you're going into the center of the home. But then it had these wonderful glass, expanses of glass, that gave a great view. to the outside. So even though you were inside the space, they wanted to celebrate the views out to the country club. And it was also made to be expanded easily. So it was one section, but if you wanted to add, if you had growth in membership or growth in programming, it was meant to be able to be easily added onto. So it was written up at the time in publications and just a great building. Speaker 8 (12:20) Widely heralded, as I understand. Speaker 3 (12:22) Indeed. Speaker 8 (12:23) But I heard, Ian, maybe you can clarify this, that over time, most of the members hated it. I don't know that I can speak to that, but it does make sense. And really did not like the modern design at all. They liked the function of it. They just wanted it to look more like the past than it did previously. Speaker 4 (12:42) Right. That would make sense to me. Speaker 3 (12:44) Yeah, we may not know that for sure, but considering what they replaced it with, that would seem to indicate that that's the case. Speaker 8 (12:50) Yeah, they put a much more traditional thing on the property. Speaker 7 (12:54) And then nearby that, in 2013, we Speaker 8 (12:57) lost the Paschal House by James Fitzgibbon, which I think was really the last sort of major loss in Raleigh of a remarkable Speaker 4 (13:05) house. Thankfully, the last major loss, yeah. I think it was an absolute shame to lose that house, a tragedy really. I think Myrick Howard even called it vandalism at one point. I think that might be a little bit of a stretch, but it was certainly a tragedy. Beautiful house designed in 1950. One owner. One owner. And the children couldn't seem to find a way to sell it, unfortunately. And I think the thing that really put the nail in the coffin for that property was the fact that the lot was three acres and the development pressure on a three-acre parcel is just... And I don't know that there's many houses in Raleigh that could withstand that, say maybe the state capitol. But, yeah, it's a real shame. Where was it? On Alamance Speaker 8 (13:56) Drive in Raleigh. Okay. Carolina Country Club. Oh, all right. Inside Speaker 4 (14:00) the Beltline. Yeah. Speaker 8 (14:01) Oh, yeah. Speaker 4 (14:02) Also, it was situated almost in the center of the lot, so you couldn't realistically only subdivide the back portion. I guess you could, but there wasn't enough money in it for the children. Speaker 8 (14:13) Yeah, we brought several development plans, and we had three or four people that wanted to buy the house. And they could have built it and built maybe two or three other houses on it successfully, but they wanted to max out the whole property, and it just went. And this was a house. You know, it needed some repairs, but it wasn't in horrible shape. It was beautiful. It had these sunken living room. It had these beautiful sort of plywood ceilings that were still intact. It had the hi-fi and the bookshelf that dropped down so you could put your records on it and play. Really something. Speaker 4 (14:48) Didn't it have the original kitchen appliances? Yes. Oh, yes. Incredible. Really incredible. Speaker 8 (14:53) Another building I wanted to ask about. which I don't think is in your book but was torn down recently, was Milton Smalls' Old Raleigh City Hall. What's Speaker 4 (15:02) happened to that? I don't think that. That building doesn't really get a lot of love, does it? No, it doesn't. Yeah, I was sad to see that go. It sort of disappeared quietly, didn't it? Speaker 8 (15:13) Yeah. Speaker 4 (15:14) There wasn't a lot of uproar about it. I remember a lot more uproar about the Garland Jones building than I do that one. It Speaker 8 (15:20) was a small building made out of brick and metal. It was City Hall for a long time, and then it became the police headquarters, and then they moved out. And I think it was just miscellaneous city departments for a while until they decided to build their new high-rise tower. On the property. Was it downtown? Downtown, right. Yes. Right Speaker 3 (15:40) by Nash Square. Okay. If you look at the size of what they've put up, again, it's a