100 Kingshighway

One of my earliest memories is being in a car on Kingshighway.  This St. Louis thoroughfare was one of the first urban, superhighway-like roads in America.  To this day I remember its sodium vapor lights and the sense of speed and freedom it created.  Today, Kingshighway passes many notable institutions like Barnes-Jewish Hospital, which has an international reputation, but now there’s a new reason to drive it.  St. Louis’ first Jeanne Gang property is about to open across the street from the historic Chase Park Plaza Royal Sonesta Hotel and it’s a stunner.

Jeanne Gang is one of my favorite architects.  Working from Chicago, she is the founder of Studio Gang, which already has offices in 3 American cities.  Gang is now designing structures internationally, like the new United States Embassy in Brazil.  I first became aware of her talent when Ruth and I spent time in Chicago’s Aqua Tower, which I wrote about.  I can’t wait to see her new Chicago designs like the Vista Tower and Solstice on the Park, another Mac property like 100 Kingshighway.   Mac is involved, so far, in the restoring of apartment properties in 3 Midwestern cities.

The construction of this new Mac residential tower began in February, 2018, and its first occupiers will move in this coming summer.  It soars 36 storys above Kingshighway and will contain 100 luxury apartments and 216 other units.  Those living on its upper levels will have great views of the Gateway Arch and Forest Park.  Over 380 feet tall, 100 Kingshighway will have some retail space on its lower floors.

Its design is innovative, containing 4-story stacked tiers in its dramatic rise.  There will be outdoor spaces on top of each tier.  Its leaf-shaped plan provides corner living rooms with double exposures that add to both the view and interior lighting.  A lot of glass is in this design.   Park Tower East is 2 blocks away and the eminent Chase is just across the street.

 

One day Jeanne Gang will be on the list of America’s best architects along with Frank Gehry and that other Frank from Chicago.

Hank

 

 

Casa Neverlandia

Austin is becoming a high tech phenomenon with construction cranes everywhere, complexity, and traffic.  The artists and misfits who made Austin weird in the last century are being frozen out by growth, and the middle class is becoming extinct.  The places these eccentrics established are becoming wacky attractions like the Museum of the Weird and the Susanna Dickinson Museum.  Shortly after we arrived in Austin, Ruth and I took a chance and went to Casa Neverlandia.  We had been warned not to show up unannounced.   It was a Saturday afternoon and a tour was in progress that James Talbot welcomed us to join.  I soon felt sorry for Talbot.

Artist James Talbot bought a home in 20th century Austin and turned it into an eclectic and unconventional dwelling he calls Casa Neverlandia.  He gives tours of it on weekends and worries about what he will do when taxes, the cost of urban upkeep, and his solo status make it impossible for him to continue.  At one point he said he hoped for historical zoning in his neighborhood.  He is a serious artist who could be easily misunderstood.  He is an environmentalist living in an undulating fantasyland with solar panels.  He keeps it going one day at a time and has never completed the shower behind his attention-getting, shell-shaped bathtub that he has only uses on special occasions.   He is a modern-day Peter Pan in an urban landscape that will become increasingly not his lifestyle.  The photo above shows how close he lives to downtown Austin.  I took that photo in his very eccentric backyard on a high platform after I crossed a wobbly suspension bridge.  Talbot descended to the bottom of a fire pole with ease just after I took the picture above and, with his permission, one of him.  I did not follow him down to street level via the pole.

Talbot appears to have always been a free spirit.  He spoke little of his past as he talked about the present and partying in the large playroom on the 2nd level of his fun-to-visit Casa.  He grew up in a military family and lived in Honduras, Turkey and Morocco before studying architecture, settling down in Austin, and becoming a very mixed media artist.  His messy but serious workshop was full of materials and projects, and he talks about the workshops he gives and the children he hopes to inspire through his magic.  He does fanciful beadwork and makes large, often circular wall decorations that do gain attention.

There were 5 people on the tour when we joined it, and a lady from Vancouver, BC came in after Ruth and I did.  She was welcomed and given a catch-up tour.  I asked her if there was anything like Casa Neverlandia in Vancouver and she winced and said, “No.”   The others left before we did, so I didn’t have a chance to ask them what they thought of this truly unique and personal house.  See it before urban renewal makes it too hard to maintain or James Talbot is given an offer for it that is too good to refuse.  An office tower is destined to some day be where Casa Neverlandia is now.

Hank

Killeen’s Fort Hood

Once a farming community, Killeen, Texas, has grown to 145,000 people mainly because it’s home to Fort Hood.   It has become a service community that lacks charm but has every chain store imaginable.  Fort Hood is mainly a training facility with its own population of about 40,000 that includes army personnel in training and the people training them.  They need off base stores for fun and entertainment.  There are lots of fast food options on base.  The main reason for visiting Killeen, for now, is to go on this base to visit 2 so-so regimental museums.  It’s a rather arduous process to gain entry to them for travelers just passing through.  This will hopefully change in about 2 years.

Fort Hood wasn’t built until 1942 when World War II was happening and a post for testing tank destroyers was needed.  Sixteen years later its most famous trainee, Elvis Presley, arrived for about half a year.  I was also told that Joe Lewis trained here, but I didn’t have the foresight to ask it this was the prizefighter or the kickboxer.  The director of the Fort Hood Museums, Steven Draper, gave Ruth & me time and toleration while telling us about the museums future plans and providing us with information about Fort Hood that was helpful.   Fort Hood has grown to be the largest active-duty US military base in the world and the largest employer in Texas.  Its stated job is to maintain a constant state of readiness for combat missions.

The larger of the 2 museums tells the story of the 1st Cavalry Division in considerable detail.  By 1942 troopers on horseback were becoming obsolete.  The 1st Cavalry Division dated from 1921 and operated out of Fort Bliss with headquarters in El Paso as the 1st’s mounted force patrolled the Texas-Mexico border.  The Pacific Theater of World War II required a different type of training, and their mission changed to jungle and amphibious survival.  It did not see combat until 1944 when its beach-storming actions resulted in 7,000 Japanese casualties.  The 1st’s inductees were soon fighting in the Philippines and receiving Medals of Honor.  After the war, the 1st spent 5 years in Japan on occupation duty.  This was followed by action in Korea, Viet Nam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  There is information about all of these with a special focus on Viet Nam.  Outside there are many decommissioned vehicles and planes. I asked Draper which one I should focus on and he told me that the Huey helicopters were the most popular because older visitors remember them from news reports out of Viet Nam.  I was more impressed by the insect-like Skycrane.

The other and smaller museum is about the 3rd Cavalry Regiment.  It has artifacts beginning with the regiment’s founding in 1846 with action in the Mexican War up to the present’s war on terror.  There are displays about Indian Wars, The Spanish American War, and more.  There are some beautiful regimental standards like the ones above and below along with lots of weapons and uniforms.

To get into Fort Hood for now is difficult.  Ruth & I had to acquire visitor cards that are good for a year by providing our driver’s licenses, our rental car papers, insurance info, and a social security number.  Within 2 years, if current plans are realized, there will be an off-base museum that replaces the 2 current museums.  Called the National Mounted Warrior Museum, it will be located outside this base’s security perimeter near the current Marvin Leith Visitors Center.

Hank

 

 

 

The Penders

 

Of the places we went in 2019, one remains fixed in memory and demands return, Canada’s Gulf Islands and especially The Penders.   I feel like we covered Salt Spring Island well but not the joined 2 islands called The Penders.   While there, we were too focused on finding the trails to ocean views that abounded on maps, but in reality we usually ended up on the top of a hill staring at a a gate or a sign that read Private or No Trespassing or Beware of the Dog.  The 2,200 people who live on The Penders may be welcoming in public, but they value and demand privacy around their properties.

 

There is no town on The Penders and only one developed shopping area, the Driftwood Centre, where everyone gathers.  There were lots of hilltop houses.  Maybe we went to the wrong places.  When I look at the maps I brought home, I see lots of places I wish I had seen like  the Magic Lake area on North Pender that everyone told me was on flat ground and is quite a housing development and Wallace Point with 4 ocean access views.  The National Park Reserve and Poet’s Cove Resort were on South Pender, which has only 10% of all Penderites.  We drove over the one lane bridge to it but didn’t stay long.

The Penders are small, only 14,681 acres.  There is only one major ferry terminal.  It’s at Otter Bay on North Pender.  It’s only about 3½ miles from there to the bridge to South Pender, which is an even smaller and hillier island  than North Pender.  I’d also like to see another Gulf Island like Galiano or Saturna.  Mayne looks small but quite developed.  Locals discouraged us from visiting any of them off-season.  We must go back to resolve these many issues.

Ruth Is my source of information about the travels of Meghan and Harry.  She just told me that they are in the LA area looking at properties near her mother.  I didn’t know.  I thought they were in Canada on Vancouver Island looking at houses.  Real estate developers on the internet are showing them, and us, undeveloped, buyable islands in the Gulf Island area.  A house built out there would surely mean privacy for the still royal couple, but it would take years and lots of money to develop.  Meanwhile, Ruth assures me that Meghan and Harry don’t have money issues and retain a residence in England at a place called Frogmore.

We only focused on the hilly parts of North Pender, the shopping area where most of the action was, and Woods on Pender, the place where we stayed.  Its owner drove there to meet us and give us a key to any room we wanted.  Because it was late in the year, he said there were no other guests.  However, that night there were folks we didn’t know in the hot tub.

The Penders nickname is “the Friendly islands”.  They are very wild and beautiful.  One guide book showing a lady in  kayak on its cover says that these islands still enjoy the atmosphere of the past when supplies were delivered by boat.  This seems true.  It’s definitely a place to get away from 21st century problems.

Its Art Guide lists 19 galleries and studios, none of which we visited.  Nine of them are in the Magic Lake area.  The Gulf Islander says that “Over two dozen galleries flourish on North and South Pender”.    To be continued.

Hank

The Trinity River Audubon Center

The National Audubon Society operates more than 30 welcoming centers around the USA.  Ruth and I have been to a few.  We have even seen the first one in Greenwich, CT.  While in Texas, we visited the Trinity River Audubon Center not too far from downtown Dallas and really liked it.

The Trinity River Audubon Center, which opened in 2008, has quite a story to tell.   It’s on reclaimed land and its Gold status LEED building must look like a huge white bird in flight from the air.  It and the land surrounding it was once the notorious Deepwood site.  There was a gravel mining operation and illegal dumping ground here before reclamation began.  Citations to clean it up were ignored, and locals reported seeing 18-wheelers dumping in the area.  The austere-looking Audubon facility has a planted green roof, and recycled blue jeans were used for its insulation.  Its walkways, stairs, and ramps lead to 120 acres of hardwood forest, many pristine ponds, and a bend in the Trinity River.  There are 5 miles of nature trails to explore.  Most of the people we met on them were disappointed that they had not see wildlife on this sunny, winter day.

Hearing this, I went inside and asked the 2 ladies running this center about recent bird sightings, and one of them  told me that there hadn’t been many before saying, “Sparrows” and giving me a list of the common birds that  are seen year-round.  There were 12 sparrow species on that list and more than 100 names of birds.  The list was quite diverse and the lady began listing the most common ones in her experience.  “Great egrets, vultures, turkeys, red-tailed hawks, scissor-tailed flycatchers,” she enumerated.  The other lady named Allison joined our conversation and told me that she once saw 12 roseate spoonbills in a single day.  The other lady thought of my dilemma and told me that yellow-bellied sapsuckers were common this time of year.  I saw none.  Texas has more than 600 resident and migrating bird species, more than any other state, and more than half of its non-tropical birds live along the Trinity River.

The Trinity is a major Texas stream.  It’s 550 miles long and a water source for 10 million people.  It flows to Trinity Bay, which is part of Galveston Bay, and has been much diverted.  Twenty years after a major flood in 1909, its course through Dallas was completely altered.  The new channel is one mile from the old one, and it was a polluted mess by the 1960s.

It’s hard to believe while there that the Trinity River Audubon Center with its primitive forest and 10 scenic ponds is so close to a huge city.  In the Center itself, I saw swimming turtles and listened to some birds, but I saw none of the 45 resident mammals from its easy-to-walk trails.  I suppose I was there at the wrong time of day and year.

Hank