Artifacts Anonymous

My name is Luke Jones, and I'm an artifactaholic. And I have no plans to change! HA!

Today's artifact is still the M&NA railroad. We previously discussed the sad shape of Pangburn's rail center. I found an archival photograph of the same building:



This was taken in 1921, still a good 28 or so years before the railroad's ultimate demise. Apparently the M&NA wasn't exactly the world's most favorite railroad. To many, the letters more accurately stood for "May Never Arrive," but if you had to get to Pangburn or Letona or one of those other little burgs you had to grit your teeth and take it.

I read an account (from the White County Historical Society) where a man remembered the wood stove on his passenger car running out of kindle and some brave or crazy men jumped out of the car and tore some boards right off of the depot.

But when M&NA engines broke down too much, oftentimes they would end up in Kensett. Yes, the little hamlet called Kensett was a major intersection for M&NA trains back in its day. It's a sad place now. A man who grew up there told me the other day, "Wal-Mart killed this town."

But the M&NA had packed up and left probably before Sam Walton had been kicked out of Newport. So the rail ruins of the M&NA have had a long time to become part of the scenery. The same man who dictated Kensett's death showed me these:



On the edge of someone's property on a back road in Kensett are these unusual concrete ruts. I was absolutely delighted to learn that they are the ruins of the M&NA locomotive shop! There may have been a complete structure built over these ruts at one point but now the concrete structures poking through the ground are all we have.

The "teeth" on the edges of the trenches once held cross ties between them (a few are left). Locomotives would roll over the pit and workers could slide under there and make repairs. This must have been a major stop for the M&NA, because there are two more bays:



Across from the bays are some more ruinous bits that are impossible to identify:



I find it amusing that the roadbed leads right up to the ruins of an old barn, which in turn doesn't seem to be used for its original purpose. The discarded farming equipment along the repair bays leads me to believe that prosperity hasn't been seen in this part of Kensett for a long, long time.

-Jonesy

Derelict depot

There's a certain amount of pleasure in finding a town's old train station in an odd place. Many of the smaller towns in Arkansas were served by the Missouri & North Arkansas line, an up-and-coming railroad that had a depot in Searcy in its day.

Unfortunately it made the mistake of following the Mississippi River instead of going to Little Rock. A man who's studied the rise and fall of the line told me that if they had gone to Little Rock, they might still be around today.

But they aren't. Their thinking was if they followed the might Mississip, they would get all of the commerce along the way. But commerce along the river died halfway through the 20th century, and so did the M&NA.

The M&NA literally created some towns, including Pangburn. This little burg lives right at the border of White County and had its heyday with the railroad. The old commercial sector is mostly gone now, just one single block of 19th and 20th century brick buildings left.

And the old depot...well, see for yourself.



Actually it's fairly rare that a small town has been able to keep its depot at all. Most tiny towns like Kensett, Judsonia, McRae and Garner all had depots at one point but they were sacrificed for various reasons. This one, though, managed to tough it out.

It has been a private residence for many years and the other side of the building is still covered in dismal vinyl siding and is barely recognizable as a train station. But the owners recently peeled the siding off on this side and the beautiful Italianate style has come through once again. It's still in pretty hideous shape, though.

I've heard there are plans to restore the building, but I never hold my breath for this type of thing. I hope, I hope, I hope, but we'll see. In the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts.

-Jonesy

10 things to do in Searcy on 10/10/1910

The last time we had a 10/10/10 was 100 years ago, and it will be 100 years until we have another one. So let's celebrate this exceptional decimal by looking back at the last time we had it.

A man recently gave me some .pdf copies of vintage Searcy maps, and one dates from 1908, so much of my information is coming from there. Searcy was still a pretty small town at that time, boasting 3,500 people. In fact in those days it was actually competing with Beebe, Kensett, Bald Knob and Judsonia, all of which had better access to the railroad than Searcy. So this little town had to struggle to survive with its better-accessed brethren.

Funny how things work out, isn't it?

Anyway, let's go.

10. Have a drink
And I'm not talking about Coca-Cola, although even in 1910 that would be possible. White County was very much wet right up until about 1957 when a bartender in Bald Knob shot a guy for saying something to his wife. Or so the story goes. But the point is, in 1910, any of those many, many groceries around the court square wouldn't have blinked twice if you asked for a bottle of whiskey. But no longer. In fact, try to find a grocery near a courthouse square in any town in this country. Let me know. I'll just wait here.

9. Get tailored
Take a stroll down Spring Street in 1910 and just across from the Gentry Baptist Church (approximately where the First Baptist Church is today) you will find a tailor. Pop in, get measured and leave with a suit that's made exactly to your proportions.

8. Enjoy residential Race Street
It may be hard to believe, but the part of Race Street leading into downtown was once a shady residential avenue. Before Sexton's, Walgreen's, Mi Ranchito, Lazercade or any of that business popped up, there were large, beautiful houses and stately oak trees. Chances are, you would know who lived in each and every house. By the late 1950s, a man named Oran Vaughan built a hardware store across from the famous Black House (now the Searcy Art Gallery) and the Rodgers house. Feeling scandalized by the rude brick building, the Rodgers built a person-high wall along the front of their property so they wouldn't have to look at the Vaughan store. The Rodgers house was bulldozed in the early 2000s. The Vaughan store still stands.

7. Watch the new bank being built
There were at least a couple of different banks in Searcy in 1910, but the one that still stands to this day is on the corner of Spruce and Arch. After 100 years, it's not a bank anymore, but instead holds some offices. Regions bought out these bank at some point. The plaque on the side of the building labels it, "Searcy Bank: 1905." However, in 1908, the map labels this area as "Ruins of Fire." So it must have been rebuilt after that fire in its present form. On this day in 1910, you might be able to stop by and ask the construction workers what the new building will look like.

6. Walk to the city limits
I mention this simply because it was very, very easy to do in 1910. Nowadays, Searcy has sprawled right up to Highway 67, and even sprawls a little bit past there. Back then, the part of Race Street that we consider the "business district" was just wilderness, possibly farmland and most likely unpaved. Essentially, the town ended right around where Harding University is now. So you could walk there and to the other end of the town in just a few hours. But watch out for horse poop!

5. Check out the shooting gallery
This raises a lot of questions. Just west of the court house, in a building that I believe today holds the Toy Box, is labeled "Shooting Gallery." Was this like the typical carnival game where you fire at mechanical moving targets with a toy gun? Or did you actually fire a real gun? Who knows! All I know is I want to go to then and there.

4. Sneak into Galloway's natatorium
Harding University had its early years in the town of Morrilton, Arkansas. But even in 1910 it hadn't started yet, and the prestigious woman's school known as Galloway was in its place. A couple of Harding's modern buildings were used by Galloway before Mr. Armstrong got there. In 1910, the school had just a few buildings. What came to be known as Godden Hall (razed in the 1950s) was the main building, and just west of that was a business department and dormitory (now known as Pattie Cobb Hall). A short distance southeast was a laundry and heating plant, just along the railroad. South of the dorm was a natatorium. But wait, what the heck is a natatorium?
It's an indoor swimming pool. I think you know what to do.

3. Ride a train to Little Rock
This is probably the first thing I would do after walking around the town for a while. Searcy had a few different railroad depots in those days, and most of them had to transfer to other towns (like Kensett or Bald Knob) to get to bigger cities. The trip to Little Rock, to me, would be more than just visiting a big city. It would be a chance for me to see all of the struggling small towns in their heydays, living on the blood of the railroad. I wouldn't care if the trip took three hours (or maybe more). It would all be worth it. So let's go.

2. Watch some vaudeville
In the place where we can find the still-in-business Rialto Theater today was labeled in 1908 simply, "theatre." By 1910 there wasn't much in the way of film to watch, so I have to assume that what went on in the Searcy theatre was either drama or vaudeville. I see enough drama as it is, so I would definitely elect vaudeville in this case. By the way, next door to the theatre is a place called "Searcy News," and then down from there is a marble works and a bottle works. Times sure have changed, eh?

1. Visit Sulphur Springs Park
Would you believe that in Searcy's earlier days, people came from all over to visit Spring Park? Yeah, I know! But it's true. In those days, Spring Park was a healing mecca. The park is named for its white sulphur spring, which folks would bathe in to heal various ailments. The water contained sulphur, chalybeate and alum. Apparently, it both smelled and tasted terrible. The railroad once terminated right at the entrance of the park, allowing visitors to step right off the train and into Searcy's greatest resort.
In 1910 there were still a number of hotels around the park, including the popular Gill House, an institution that eventually changed into the Mayfair Hotel, a building that still stands. Searcy's resort days were over around the time that Harding rolled into town, but 100 years ago, it was like the Disneyworld of White County.

And that's the list! Depending on when you read this, I hope you have a good 10/10/10, but if you missed it, you'll have to wait another 100 years. Maybe by then we'll have those flying cars and all? Yeah, probably not.

-Jonesy

The Ten Things I Hate About Now: Part 3

2. Factory Farming



I may step on some toes with this one. But I know something must be important to me when it affects my eating habits.

Then:
Animals were farmed by traditional methods - you know, the way we all have in our heads that they're farmed. On a homestead with a quaint family, a few angsty brothers, a hen-like mother and maybe a tomboyish daughter. The whole red barn with silos, ancient farmhouse, rolling meadows, animals of many different species roaming about, etc. All of the cliches you learned on the see-n-say.

Now:
The above description accounts for something like one percent of farming in this country. Maybe less. For everything else, it's the factory farm.

I'm not exactly sure how to describe just how awful the idea of the factory farm is. Maybe you remember when PETA was doing an expose on KFC farms, and how the workers were abusing the chickens all the time? Not only is that still going on, but it's just the very beginning.

Farming by its very nature involves a certain amount of cruelty, but nothing to this extent. Factory farms operate under the notion that animals are not animals. Instead, they are machines that can be tuned up, altered and controlled to better supply the human population. In this way, some animals are fed food that they aren't meant to eat (pigs and cows are fed human-unsuitable corn grown in gargantuan fields that could be otherwise used to feed people, for example). The environment is controlled at all times and most animals never, ever see the light of day. Waste disposal is at best unnatural and at worst apocalyptic to the environment on and around the farms.

And this method hasn't been around for that long. It was only in the postwar years that it really caught on.

Hogs and cattle have it pretty bad, but let's talk about the worst sufferers in this mess: Chickens and turkeys. Have you bought "cage-free" eggs? You were deceived. The USDA stipulations for cage-free are laughable, and any hen factory worth its salt is going to milk the loopholes for everything they're worth. "Cage-free" hens usually get to exit through a tiny, gated porthole in the side of the coop that opens into a tiny patch of fenced-in dirt. And most of the time that gate is closed, and the hens are confined inside.

Oh, and you know how when you think of turkeys, you see huge, magnificent birds with lots of feathers? Throw that image in the shredder. Modern turkeys have been bred to the point that they are so top-heavy (I.E., more breast meat) they can barely stand, let alone fly. Both turkeys and chickens are complicated animals that form social groups.

So do hogs. You know, there used to be lots and lots of different breeds of hogs. But now, farmers have essentially phased out all of those other breeds and replaced them with the current one that is fragile, temperamental and allergic to sunlight. The same thing happened to turkeys: There once were different, regional breeds of turkey. But now, everywhere you go, it's the same one.

Did you hear about the recent outbreak of salmonella in chicken eggs? Some ex-workers at one of the Iowa chicken plants said that, on the conveyor belt that was supposed to only carry eggs, they would regularly see chickens, alive and dead, rats, tools and once, a live cat. And when they pointed out these problems to USDA officials, they would turn their heads and say, "There's nothing we can do about it."

I could go on and on. Shady business tactics, massive distances between farm and slaughterhouses, frequent abuse, awful slaughterhouse conditions, disease-ridden meat--every horrible thing you can imagine goes on at these farms, and no one seems to care much about it.

Future:
I think--and hope--that in the decades to come, humanity will look back on factory farming and call it one of the biggest evils of the 21st century.

But the solution is not at all easy. The problem is, unlike what PETA believes, people are not just going to stop eating meat. And the reason meat prices have stayed relatively the same over the last 60 to 100 years of rapid growth is because the factory farm movement has kept up with demand. Its efficiency is unrivaled.

If factory farming were to stop today and suddenly everyone was farming traditionally again, meat prices would skyrocket. There just wouldn't be enough to go around. Unfortunately the easiest solution to this might be higher prices or - yes - lab-grown meat. In fact, I would even support the latter if it meant an end to this travesty of a development.

I'm not even really an animal rights guy. I like eating meat. I always have. I think it's natural. I just can't keep buying into this system. I just can't look at a plate of pork loin or chicken Parmesan or brisket and think, "This end justifies the means."

1. Suburban Sprawl



Well, here it is. The big issue. The one that ties into just about everything onto this list. For some people, it's abortion or human trafficking or starvation. For me, it's suburban sprawl.

Then:
Cities, towns and villages existed as coherent, unified systems of businesses, residences and industry. Zones complemented each other -- residential areas mingled with commercial and industrial, so workers could live near their factories, shop owners could live above their shops and civilians had easy access to the town around them.

Towns were for people. Not for cars. Sidewalks, alleys, paths -- all of these things existed to allow people to travel on foot to their destinations, which were usually within walking distance.

In fact, just quit reading now and go visit Paris or Florence or Tokyo or some small town in Britain and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Now:
Some bug set off a chain reaction shortly after World War II. Somewhere in the military tactics we used overseas clicked in our town development, and a problem occurred.

We started dividing the elements of a unified space. Business moved out of downtown and into a new place, on the edge of town. These new residential areas - subdivisions started appearing. Places called "industrial parks" appeared.

If a town is a unified mixture of ingredients, the sprawl model is all of those ingredients spread out, far apart, on a long, low table.

But what's so bad about all of that, you ask? What's the problem? I'll tell you. It destroys community. In fact, it's destroyed community so utterly that we don't even know what the word means anymore.

We'll talk about the living environment first.

You can see a sprawl-model neighborhood in just about any town. Most of the time the houses were built anywhere from the 1970s until now, with a few rare earlier examples. All of the houses look just about the same - low, usually one story, with a lot of yard and a very large, sometimes two- or three-car garage. Sometimes the garage takes up the entire front of the building.

The roads in the neighborhood are long, winding, and seem to have no rhythm or purpose. Some lead to dead-end cul-de-sacs. You might enter a neighborhood thinking you will find a shortcut to a place on the opposite side, but the roads may turn you completely around. Although the speed limit is 25 mph, you find it very easy to speed 10 or more over the limit.

Probably there are no sidewalks or parks. There are people outside, but not too many. As you leave you see the name of the neighborhood is something completely irrelevant, like "Stonehenge Garden" or "Perimeter Center."

The sprawl house, in essence, is trying to be the American ideal of a farmhouse: isolated, a family's treasured living space with a lot of surrounding property and the promise of unconquered land. But the fatal flaw is, you can't have that in a town or city environment without creating a sense of total alienation. I've read about Boomers who fled our cities during the 1960s and found themselves living in these sprawl neighborhoods where they never, ever met anybody.

As a result, people become paranoid. They lock their doors (in the 1950s and earlier, they didn't) and are suspicious of visitors.

And the businesses you see pop up in the sprawl are just hopeless parodies of the community-driven places that once existed in downtowns. But I've already covered that in my big-box retail section.

And these neighborhoods and business zones are horrible, horrible wastes of space. Take a look at some aerial photos of sprawl restaurants (Chili's, Applebee's, Olive Garden, etc.) and note how much space is devoted to parking lots. And that goes back to our over-reliance of cars.

The same cars that are splattering kids in the sprawl neighborhoods. The reason why this happens is because of those long, winding roads I was talking about. Neighborhood designers made them like that because they were supposed to be safer, but instead, the gentle curves and wide lanes just provoke people to drive faster. A good neighborhood has sharp right turns, lots of stop signs and big obstacles. Nothing makes you drive slower than having to stop all the time.

And why do you think we have such a problem with obesity? People in the sprawl drive everywhere. There's no public transportation and kids are never able to experience their town because there is no town. So they stay at home, play video games and at worst, never meet the other kids in their neighborhood. They turn into that alienated and depressed teenage generation that we can't seem to understand.

But who convinced us to move to these neighborhoods? People didn't just show up there overnight. Some of it was the new families returning from the War. The earliest sprawl neighborhoods were what they called "Levittowns," and were built specifically for those soldiers.

But it continued through the 1950s, and led to this particular phenomenon called "White Flight." This happened when blacks started moving into the older neighborhoods in cities and racism started urging folks out. Underhanded real estate techniques (usually called "block-busting") populated these new neighborhoods. And then the 50-minute commute began.

As a result, our cities and downtowns atrophied. Do you remember when, in the 1990s, New York City was legendary for its crime? That was a recent development. It happened because people simple left the city! All of the business was handed to the sprawl on a silver platter.

In some places, it's gotten severely out of hand. Try driving through Houston, Phoenix or Atlanta and you'll see what I mean. I lived for seven years in West Mobile and watched the sprawl choke the life out of everything around me.

Sprawl affects our aesthetics (it's all very, very ugly and commands low respect), our property values (it lowers them almost 100 percent of the time) and ultimately our community. The big box stores, the McMansions, the fast food, the megachurches, the oceans of parking lot, the death of downtowns, the crime in cities - all of it ties back into the sprawl.

Future:
I can't really say. Sprawl a multi-headed beast and I don't really know which head is the main one. I can say that a lot of towns and town designers have seen the problems that sprawl creates, but it will be a very, very long time before all of the damage is undone. I am pleased to say that I've witnessed a bit of a renaissance in Searcy's downtown over the last five years, and some of that has to do with Main Street Arkansas, a program that I love with all of my heart.

Other times I think, "Why don't I just leave this country?" But I can't, because it's my country, and my family and friends are here, and I can't just leave it all behind like that. So I guess, in the meantime, it's back to fishing for time.

FOR SOME FURTHER READING...
I got a lot of my information from the following sources...
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck
The Old Neighborhood: What we lost in the great suburban migration, 1965-1999 by Ray Suarez
The Failure of Modern Architecture by Brent C. Brolin
America's Forgotten Architecture by Tony Wrenn and Elizabeth Mulloy
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
Super-Size Me (Film), dir. John Banzhaf
Food, Inc. (Film), dir. Robert Kenner


Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small
that we can never get away from the sprawl

-Jonesy

The Ten Things I Hate About Now: Part 2

6. Interstate Highways

This is the one transportation-related thing that I hate more than automobiles.

Then:
Automobile transportation took place on regular highways. They are the roads that we now consider to be the "back roads," the ones that go through actual towns. Trips took much longer by car, but were full of character as towns were full of commerce, people and life.

If you wanted a more direct route, you could just take a train. Intercity routes were all-inclusive. Towns that railroads didn't reach were scarce. Even the most minuscule of hamlets usually had their own stop. Trains in the 1930s, 40s and 50s were sometimes even faster than the modern Amtrak routes because of better tracks, less competition with freight lines and more right-of-ways.

Now:
It's possible to take your car and drive it across a country apparently made up of absolutely nothing except for rest stops, bill boards and the occasional cluster of high rises. To most drivers, towns along the interstate are exactly as valuable as their selection of fast food. Cities invited the interstates in with open arms, then found out that the highways did nothing but spread them paper-thin, eviscerate neighborhoods with depressing concrete vistas and create garbage-strewn wastelands where streets and boroughs once stood.


Pictured: Madness

The biggest problem comes from how cities decided to incorporate the highways. Instead of treating them like airports, letting them flow alongside cities at a safe distance, they let them come right in through the city center, dissecting them in

Additionally, all of the once-flourishing and personality-laden businesses along the old highways died and are still rotting there. This was inevitable. I would much rather visit a kitchy wigwam motel than any one of the cookie-cutter La Quintas clogging the country.

Sure, interstates are ultra-efficient and marvels of engineering. But that doesn't stop them from being dehumanizing.

Future:
People hate driving for hours and hours. They really do. So this is one area in which, I feel, a slight glimmer of hope can be seen through the cloverleaf intersections. Intercity public transit may make reappearance in my lifetime. Obama relegated a cool $8 billion towards high-speed trains a year or so ago, moving him up a notch in my book.

Then again, China is planning on spending something like $300 billion to amp up their already-nice railroads and highway people want to relegate $600 billion in Arkansas alone. So...damn, I guess.

5. Apparel

Again, another item that boils down to aesthetics. But I feel it goes deeper than that.

Then:
While in public, men wore suits and hats. End of story. Suits had great variety of color, style and decor and were tailor-made by clothiers. But this is the most important bit: Everyone wore clothing that complemented the human body. Even the poor and homeless looked distinguished--maybe not to the eyes of the time, but to our modern eyes they do. Also, no such things as t-shirts (which I wear, by the way).

Whenever I watch a movie made in the 1950s or earlier, my overwhelming feeling is always, "Why can't we dress like this anymore?"

Now:
Everything resembling a dress code has been obliterated, its remains trampled on and left to putrefy. Suits are a necessary evil: We wear them to work, but only if we absolutely need to and definitely not on Fridays. All other times, we basically parade around in our underwear. We buy ready-made clothes from department stores who outsource almost entirely to sweatshops in third-world countries. Crocs, flip-flops, jorts, oversized t-shirts, sneakers--the lot of it.

See, I think dressing well purports a certain attitude of respect, not just for others, but for yourself. When you dress in a way that complements you, you automatically feel better about yourself. And when everybody does, it elevates the respect you have for your fellow man. It improves communication. And going back to the tailoring, think about how special it is to own a suit that was made in your town by someone you know. Who can say that anymore?

However, I will admit that apparel is overall easier for women now. Even though I still believe people--including women--dressed better in older times, I know that clothes were more restrictive for females. It still is, sometimes, but it's less complicated.

Future:
We absolutely will not go back to old ways. The overall cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s put the dress codes so far behind us that I will eat my shorts if the masses ever want to go back to them. While I'm thinking, "I wish I could dress like that," most everyone else is thinking, "I'm glad we don't have to wear suits all the time anymore." It's just so easy to slap on a shirt, shorts and flip-flops that dressing well seems too old-fashioned to exist.


4. Big Box Commerce

Then:
All business, big and small, took place downtown. The downtown was a strictly organized sector that allowed for a mixture of business, pleasure, and residence--folks met in stores owned by their fellow citizens and sometimes lived above them in loft apartments. Many town shops were what we call the "third place," a midway between home and work that friends and acquaintances frequented.

Buildings were built for multiple uses and when they changed hands, new stores could easily be built within the confines of the old walls. Cars were allowed within the space of downtown, but the champion of its borders were pedestrians: everything was within walking distance.

Many products were house-made or unique to the environment of the town. Tailors, soda shops, drugstores, banks, cafes, movie theaters, even churches and civic buildings were all located in one area.

Now:
Wal-Mart. Home Depot. Walgreen's. Starbucks. McDonalds. Malls. The list goes on. We've put our trust in these supermassive companies that we now call "big box retail," and I don't really need to explain what they are, because they are in every town.

But the whole idea might be best explained by talking about Wal-Mart, the most recognizable of the giants. Sam Walton's plan was to build these so-called "discount cities" (the original subtitle for Wal-Mart stores) on the edge of town, far away from the original business sectors. He probably didn't intend to actually replace them entirely, but that's what ended up happening.

Through the 60s, 70s and 80s, these huge franchises with the "slightly out-of-town" model got bigger and bigger and bigger until now most towns have two distinct areas.

Let's take Searcy, for example. Here, the original business district is on the west end of Race Street and the big-box part is on the east end. Where we see Wal-Mart (note: at the very edge of town) and Chili's and Fred's and so on used to be mostly wilderness between Searcy and Kensett. Now, it's a different kind of wilderness.

The third place is dead and gone. People don't congregate in places like Wal-Mart to socialize, because there's no trace of locality. You could go to Cabot and it's exactly the same as the big boxes in Searcy. It doesn't matter where you are, the big boxes are exactly the same. And when a big box dies, its hulk sits there, rotting, usually until some other big box tears it town to replace it with its own cookie-cutter standards.

There's nothing for pedestrians. Walking between the big box stores is usually not just dangerous, but downright impossible. Zoning standards demands these huge drainage ditches that are uncrossable by pedestrians. So we drive everywhere, and that aspect of community is further degraded. And this all ties into a much, much larger issue that I'll deal with further down the line.

And what about downtown? Well, up until a few years ago Searcy's original business district was certifiably dead. The few stragglers that made it past the 60s and 70s bubbled into rambling masses: First Security Bank now owns a full block of downtown and has offices in an entire row of storefronts that were once separate shops; Sowell's Furniture owns almost all of its part of its end of Arch Street. We're just now starting to see a resurgence of interest in the area, but we have to fight for it. And it's a long, uphill battle.

Future:
If we see a transportation overhaul and the replacement of gasoline with something else, big box retail will collapse on itself like the huge package of hot air that it is. But we have to fundamentally change first.

3. Architecture

Throughout my time as an art student, and especially after visiting the architectural mecca called Chicago, I've eventually concluded that my very favorite form of art is architecture. Maybe it's because it has the ability to transform entire living spaces into works of art and alter our perception of the world as we know it like no other art form can.

Then:
Every town, even the smallest, built their environments to last with a variety of very different, but compatible, architectural styles. Neoclassical, Victorian, Gothic, craftsman and even art deco were able to coexist in a way that complemented each other in increasingly rewarding ways.

Now:
Modern architecture happened. Its tendrils were creeping around in the big artistic minds even since 1900, but the true fruits of the various movements weren't really seen stateside until after 1950.

The Bauhaus, blobitecture, De Stijl, functionalism and the very worst, brutalism, all reared their unsympathetic heads and took over the majority of architectural firms.

Now, modernism as a whole emerged as sort of an evolution of all other styles, and I suppose on paper it might work in the minds of those who understand the principles behind each movement. But that's exactly the problem. Architecture, above all other art forms, is specifically for the public. It's not like you can design a town and display it in a gallery, then take it all down after too few people show up.

See, none of these new forms mesh with the older, traditional forms at all. They stick out like the proverbial sore thumbs, degrade their surroundings, and above all, alienate people. They appeal only to the very high-minded sort who came up with the styles in the first place. And with them came an acute disdain for traditional styles, which seemed only to propel the new styles toward clashing as violently as possible with their older brethren.

That all might not have mattered if the styles didn't trickle down to major manufacturers. As it turns out, most modernist styles are cheaper and easier to produce than the the older ones, and that means builders don't care to look in any other direction. Now, when the oldest and most beautiful structures are torn down, they are frequently replaced with something that is lacking entirely of grandeur, warmth or subtlety.

Take Penn Station, for example. Built in 1910, the station was one of the Pennsylvania Railroad's palatial terminals in Manhattan. Here's what the interior looked like:



Tremendous, vaulted ceilings, Corinthian columns, a space fit for the most grand of cathedrals. Arriving into Penn Station, a traveler must have felt like he or she was part of something truly great. You were arriving, like royalty, into a vast castle of the greatest city on Earth.

On account of progress and the atrophy of America's passenger railroads, the entire thing was razed, to literally everyone's horror, in 1964. A new terminal, still referred to by its name, was erected in its place. Here's what it looks like now.



Low ceilings, diffused fluorescent lighting, Styrofoam ceiling panels. Practical, but with all the visual appeal of a dumpster. Arriving in the modern Penn Station, a traveler feels the stress of the voyage and will mostly likely reflect on the meaninglessness of his or her short, brutish life. Or else they just won't notice the building at all.

This sort of things happens everywhere, all the time. The grand and artistic structures of yesteryear are razed to make way for parking lots, or at least structures that might as well be parking lots. In short, our cities have been raped and left in ditches.

Oh, and big box stores are all ugly and modern. Just thought I would throw that in there too.

Future:
Some virtuous people are in the business of saving old buildings, but it seems that for every beautiful thing saved, ten more are broken down. It just doesn't seem fair to me. I have been to a few cities where the built environment is treated with respect, and when old buildings are burned or razed, the new ones are constructed in a way that conforms or complements the rest of the city. But they are rare.

The simple fact that modern architecture exists and is practical simply defeats any reason for traditional styles to be used. People in this country just don't care if a building is one year old or one hundred years old, if a profit might come from demolition and replacement.

Continued in part three.

-Jonesy