Touring Superleggera: The Italian Line Travels Light

Henry Ford once said that he tipped his hat whenever an Alfa Romeo drove by.  He might have been thinking of something like the 6C-1750 Flying Star shown below, bodied by Carrozzeria Touring in Milan, a home town the coachbuilder shared with Alfa.  In January of 1931, Felice Bianchi Anderloni had his draftsman Seregni sketch the Flying Star idea for a big Isotta Fraschini*. But when Josette Pozzi ordered an Alfa 6C-1750 Gran Sport roadster that same year, she had Anderloni and his team cook up something similar for her. Like the Isotta, the little Alfa features the distinctive chrome spear dipping down at the rear of the cut-down doors.  Hood vents follow the same downward curve. Unlike the Isotta, the Alfa's rear fender sweeps over the trailing edge of the front one, forming a streamlined biplane step instead of a running board...

By the end of the Thirties, Anderloni had moved beyond streamlined effects into real aerodynamics.  Like Zagato*, Touring attracted clients who wanted light weight and high performance.  They developed a system of light alloy panels formed around a tubular steel framework, called Superleggera ("superlight").  The 6C 2300MM shown below features ovoid headlight lenses sloping with the rounded fenders, and side windows that are curved in plan as well as section...

The fastback roof form is teardrop-shaped in plan as well as section.  Note the seamless integration of rear fender forms with the roof, and the way the designers avoided straight lines even in the spare tire lid.  Rear lighting is not much more than you'd find on a motorcycle.

Touring took on the dream assignment of the era, bodying many of the 41 Alfa 8C 2900 series that were alleged to have been built to use up leftover Grand Prix racing engines. Nobody ever explained how Alfa wound up with so many unused engines from their racing program.  It didn't matter; the car's reputation as the fastest road car of the time, along with sleek teardrop shapes from Touring as well has Pinin Farina, meant Alfa sold every specimen they could build.

Touring also bodied berlinettas on the 8C 2900B chassis. The Collier Collection at the Revs Institute has a long-chassis model from 1938. Note the slotted rear fender skirts, a variation on those on the red car shown above.

A "Lungo" 8C 2900B coupe displayed outside the LeMay Museum in Seattle displays the same tapered, restrained curves...and the same restrained lighting.

Any 8C 2900 Alfa was a special car even without the Touring bodywork.  Here's the 220 hp inline eight with twin overhead cams, with two four-cylinder blocks separated by the drive for the supercharger...

In the April of 1939, Touring built this 6C 2500SS coupe to participate in that year's Le Mans with a fully integrated envelope body and no separation between front and rear fenders. The car dropped out of the race with mechanical troubles, but its design forecast the streamlined coupes and spiders that Touring built for BMW beginning the next month...

The rounded, tapered tail presages the racers that would appear at Le Mans after the war. The rounded envelope form would appear on Aston Martins, Porsches, and Ferraris.

In the early post-WW2 era Alfa abandoned the eight cylinder cars, and concentrated on their 6C2500 while preparing their 1900 four-cylinder line for the mass market.  The 1949 Villa d'Este was notable for the way that the sweeping flanges formed over the wheel openings enliven the flanks (and strengthen the alloy panels) without applied brightwork.  Note the way the curve of the rear fender flows into the door panel, again avoiding the massive look of the early slab-sided envelope-bodied racers.  This car is also distinguished by an usually glassy greenhouse for the 1940s...

In the same year, Touring began to body Ferraris using the same Superleggera method. The car below is unusual for a very early Ferrari in that it's not a racer.  The 166 two-liter V12 notchback coupe is built on the same short wheelbase as the famous Touring barchetta racers, but is so focused on road duty that it wears hubcaps, something that disappeared from Ferraris very soon after...

Touring was master at forming alloy into smooth, seamless contours, and the tapered rear end of this 166 demonstrates that. The narrow teardrop tail lights also appeared on 166 barchetta Touring built for Gianni Agnelli, the Fiat mogul...

Also in 1949, Touring created the 166 LM berlinettas for racing duty at Le Mans and in the Mille Miglia.  Here the roof takes on a fastback form.  Note that on the 166 LM below and the coupe above, the flange formed into the flanks connects the wheel openings, unlike on the Alfa Ville d'Este...

It was Anderloni's work on the Ferrari 166 barchetta, however, that made Ferrari famous. It helped that Luigi Chinetti* won Le Mans in a 166 barchetta in 1949.  But Anderloni, aided by Federico Formenti, achieved an economy of line and fitness of form to purpose that rarely came together so well... 

The eggcrate grille became a Ferrari trademark, and the deft way the concave trough between the fender peak and the hood wraps around the headlights inspired later designs, like the AC Ace.  Barchetta means "little boat".  And what Touring delivered to Chinetti for Ferrari's racing effort was tidy and shipshape in every way...

Note that the flange formed above the wheel openings curves upward around the rear wheel, and that the rear fender line is not straight as on the coupes. The effect is to visually lower the car, so that you don't notice the short (88 inch) wheelbase as you do on the red coupe.

The barchetta was so successful that Touring applied it to the 195, 212 and 340 as Ferrari introduced bigger engines to meet the demands of racers, especially in America.  Touring built one 212 long-wheelbase barchetta for Henry Ford II, and a more compact 212 for John Edgar, shown below.  The curved indent wraps around the tail lights as well as the headlights on these late (1952) barchettas, and the Edgar car has a smiley bright metal grille frame, an unusual appearance of decoration on a barchetta... 

Touring's work on Alfa and Ferrari caught the attention of Wilfredo Ricart,the engineer running Spain's Pegaso truck factory as it tried to launch a line of exclusive sports cars to create more interest in the trucks. Early Pegasos had dumpy bodywork hiding their interesting transaxle chassis and 4-cam V8.  Anderloni and Formenti managed to work their magic on a prototype Z-102 berlinetta in 1952.  Note the way the C-pillar is made to seem thinner by the circular ornament that links side and rear windows.  The cutouts in the fastback deck provide a place for lighting, and echo nostrils cut into the hood on production coupes, of which there were around 3 dozen...  

Touring also bodied a small number of competition coupes like the '54 Panamericana shown below.  These lost the nostrils in the hood, got bigger grilles with the trademark Pegaso crossbars, plexiglas covers over the headlights, and sliding side windows. As with the Ferrari 166, designers Anderloni and Formenti managed to distract from the short wheelbase. Unfortunately, they couldn't do anything about the heavy steering or the cooling system problems...  

Touring also built come competition spiders in similar style in 1953 and '54, and the car shown below was equipped with a supercharger. These cars were not successful in endurance racing, partly because of lack of development effort by the factory.  They were pretty, though...

While Touring built half of Pegaso's bodies, that only meant 42 cars.  They did much better with a series of 1900-based Sprint Coupes starting in 1951, and were able to build about 20 times as many of these cars, culminating in the completely restyled Super Sprint released late in 1955. Careful proportions and contours manage to achieve a timeless fitness of form.    

A detail shared with the white Pegaso spider above is found at the trailing edge of the front wheel arch; it's curved in section, showing how the alloy panels are formed around metal tubes. Lighting at the rear is generous compared with Touring's Thirties Alfas...

In the world of production cars, success can breed success. When Maserati decided to finally make a real production car, they invited proposals from Allemano, Touring and Vignale. Touring got to build the 3500GT coupes beginning in 1957, and Vignale the spiders.  But the contract for those coupes was the plum, as it led to Touring producing 1,981 of the deftly-detailed alloy coupe shown below.  By contrast, Vignale built only 242 spiders.  All featured the new twin-plug aluminum block twin-cam six.  A landmark car, and not just for Maserati...

                            

When Lancia introduced their new Flaminia the next year, Pinin Farina styled the sedans, and Touring got the contract for the GT coupes and convertibles. The design followed the proportions of Touring's Maserati, but surfaces were more sheer and devoid of details like the chrome fender peaks and vents give the 3500GT a human touch.  The Flaminia body is a bit like one of those steel and glass buildings from this period; on the outside, you keep trying to find some detail that makes you feel at home...

The oddly peaked front fenders and quad headlights didn't do it for me, though I loved the 3 Weber carbs under the hood of my old 3C, as well as the insignia...

The interior was that place you felt at home.  Just sitting inside made you feel rich...

At the rear, the tail lights seemed positively over-scaled compared to the Super Sprint or the Maserati.  In connecting the front to the rear, though, my much-loved old car seemed to need a bit more work from the designers.  Anderloni's team showed a more confident hand when they drew their next big assignment, the Aston Martin DB4, which appeared right after the Lancia. Gone were the unresolved headlights and quirky taillights, and the sharp peaks on the Lancia's fenders. These were replaced with smoothly rounded front fenders, a glassy fastback greenhouse, and sheer flanks relieved of the slab-sided look with functional fender vents.  The new car was shown late in 1958, and when production got moving in 1959 it was able to exploit Aston's victory in that year's Le Mans.  This is an early Series 1 car, with the frameless door glass and elongated tail lights that Touring specified.  The DB4 would never look better...

Aston would show up again on Touring Superleggera's client list, along with Jensen and Lamborghini. This is Part 1 of a two-part survey of Touring's work.  Stay tuned for subsequent developments...

*Footnote:   The Isotta Fraschini Flying Star is pictured along with the Touring-bodied 8C in "Forgotten Classic: Isotta Fraschini", in our Archives for Sept. 4, 2016.  Zagato-bodied Alfas are the subject of "Body by Zagato Part 2: Five Decades of Alfa Romeos", posted May 6, 2020.  Other early Ferraris like the 166 appear in "Lost Roadside Attraction: Luigi Chinetti Motors", posted May 6, 2018. We spent more time with Pegasos, bodied by Touring, Saoutchik and Serra, in "Forgotten Classic:  Pegaso, Spain's Flying Horse", posted June 21, 2019.

Color Photo Credits:  
All color photos are by the author.

Monochrome Photo Credits:  
Alfa Romeo Flying Star, Pegaso Z-102 Prototype:  Touring Superleggera
Alfa Romeo Ville d'Este:  Alfa Romeo S.p.A.

Ferrari 212 Barchetta & Pegaso Panamericana:  en.wheelsage.org

Maserati 3500GT:  Officine Alfieri Maserati S.p.A.
Lancia interior:  Car & Driver archives

Aston Martin DB4:  Aston Martin Lagonda 

The First Modern Car? Round Up the Usual Suspects...

Looking back at the 20th century, a century famous for massive manmade calamities, it's intriguing to note how often futurist optimism pops up.  This may have been because people mired in one of two world wars, a global pandemic, or a worldwide depression had to assume the future could only get better, or because it was a time of rapid progress in technology despite, or maybe because of, all that conflict.  As this blog is supposed to be about cars, and as the current pandemic affords time to sort through shoeboxes full of photos from car shows and museums, this might be a moment to round up some candidates in the contest for First Modern Car...

Vincenzo Lancia's Lambda, which appeared in 1922, is a contender.  It was the first production car with load-bearing unitized body construction, which it combined with independent front suspension using sliding pillars and coil springs.  The engine was the first production V4, with a narrow 14-degree angle and a single overhead camshaft.  Engine sizes varied from 2.1 liters to nearly 2.6 during the car's 9-year production run.  The construction system made it light; the '27 model at the Revs Institute above weighs just 1,720 lb.  The spotlight barely visible in the above shot can be detached and used as a flashlight, another example of the Torinese engineer's practical thinking...

In Paris, André Citroen liked the unitized body idea, and unlike Lancia, made the roof part of the unit on his similarly low-slung Traction Avant.  The first front-wheel drive car to be mass-produced, it became a hit with everyone from gangsters to the gendarmerie right after it appeared in 1934. Engines were initially inline fours (the 7 and 11 were named for their taxable horsepower) and starting in 1938, an inline six. Designers André Léfebvre and Flaminio Bertoni added 4-wheel independent suspension and rack & pinion steering to the low stance made possible by the unitized body-chassis. The car had a long production run ending in 1957, two years before the BMC Mini parked behind it appeared. The tranverse-engined, front-drive format of the Mini predicted the powertrain arrangement that would take over mass-market car design in the 1970s. Like the Traction Avant, the Mini featured unitized construction.

In Czechoslovakia at the same time, aerodymicist Paul Jaray teamed up with engineer Hans Ledwinka at the Tatra motor works to produce the Type 77, which made extensive use of light alloys in the rear-mounted, air-cooled V8 engine of 3 to 3.4 liters, and independent suspension with swing axles at the rear.  The light alloy body panels were mounted on a steel platform chassis. The engine was of dry-sump design, and featured hemispherical combustion chambers. The advertising claims it is "the car of the future." Hundreds were built from 1934 to 1938, largely by hand, as Type 77 production overlapped that of even more innovative Tatra models...

Meanwhile, in Auburn, Indiana, the struggling Auburn Cord Duesenberg combine looked to reverse its declining fortunes with something more forward-looking than their stylish but conventional Auburns and their expensive Duesies with their twin-cam, 32-valve inline eights. The engineering solution turned out to be a front-wheel drive V8,  but with with a pre-selector transmission not unlike the French Cotal unit in Delahayes.  Gordon Buehrig designed a low-slung streamliner with minimal decoration, rear-hinged hood, and retractable headlights. The early 1935 prototype below has a 6-light greenhouse and body sides that curve inward top to bottom...

The production car that caused a sensation at the New York Auto Show in November 1935 had a simpler greenhouse and straighter side section, but the simplicity and restraint of the design was like nothing else on display.  The two-tone color scheme on the Westchester sedan below is atypical...

...and the car looked better in solid colors.  Here an 810 sedan is parked in front of one of the streamlined travel trailers that appeared in the Thirties.  The troublesome transmission meant the car was slow to enter production, and during a short career in 1936-37 the Cord 810 and supercharged 812 sold only about  2,300 cars. 

Film maker Cecil B. DeMille and actress Marsha Hunt show off a 1936 Model 810 Phaeton. The supercharged 812 model appeared the next year and added another 45 hp to the Model 810's 125, but the external exhausts cluttered up the trademark "coffin nose".  Cord's 810 is the cleanest American design of this era...

The same year the Cord 810 appeared, Tatra introduced its new Type 87, another comprehensive effort to envision the modern car.  The new V8 was a 2.9 liter, and featured a single overhead cam per cylinder bank, retaining the dry sump of the Type 77.  Visually, the car was hard to mistake for anything else, with a single dorsal fin splitting the compound curves of the windowless, one-piece engine cover.  A tiny window in the panel separating the cabin from the engine room allows a bit of vision  through the vented lid.

At the front, the triple headlights signaled the designer's resolute rejection of anything conventional, and the three-piece wraparound windshield provided a panoramic view for the driver. 

The Tatra 87 and its predecessors provided enough engineering ideas for Ferdinand Porsche in his design of the Volkswagen Type 1 (the Beetle) that Tatra sued VW* in the postwar era, and won a settlement in the 1960s...

Aerodynamics were also on the mind of Giovanni Savonuzzi when he designed the Cisitalia 202 CMM (Coupe Mille Miglia) for fledgling car maker Piero Dusio in 1946. A small cabin, teardrop-shaped in plan and elevation, is inset above the exuberantly contoured alloy panels of the lower body.  The hood plunges below the front fender peaks to a low-set air intake, and tall stabilizing fins emerge from skirted rear fenders.  The curious bystander is probably reflecting that nothing like this has appeared at this Forties service station before...

The rear view shows off the talent of the panel beaters who formed those fins into aluminum.  A boundary layer air control device appears, probably for the first time on a car, above the hinged rear hatch, also a novelty.  All this effort was aimed at obtaining maximum performance out of a 1.1 liter (66 cubic inch) Fiat-based overhead valve inline four.  The performance obtained was good enough to allow Tazio Nuvolari to take 2nd place overall in the 1947 Mille Miglia, at the wheel of a Cisitalia spider with similar fins.

The Cisitalia story* highlights that much of the progress made in the early postwar era was in aerodynamics and body design, while many auto makers took advantage of a seller's market by repackaging prewar chassis and engine designs...

The production model 202 coupe, also designed by Savonuzzi and built by Pinin Farina, was credited by historians as the template for what came to be called the GT car.  An example was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art exhibit entitled "Eight Automobiles" in 1951, and MOMA acquired a specimen for their permanent collection.  The light and elegant hand-built form of the Cisitalia came at the price of about two Cadillacs when new...

Over in South Bend, Indiana, Studebaker likewise emphasized body design innovation in their first new postwar car.  As conceived by Raymond Loewy Associates with designers Robert Bourke and Virgil Exner on board, the 1947 Studebaker offered a startling new rendering of automotive form, if not in its chassis and engine design.  The Starlight Coupes with their cantilevered roofs and wraparound rear windows were offered in base model Champions (shown) and the longer Commander chassis.  The new envelope bodies were given new proportions, with much longer decks than prewar cars, and the modeling of forward-leaning rear fenders and front wheel openings imparted a sense of motion, as well as avoiding the slab-sided look of other envelope bodies.  Despite comedians' jokes ("Which way is it going?"), the new Studebakers reached a wide audience, and the new style stayed in production through 1952, after which Studebaker replaced it with another groundbreaking design from Bourke at Loewy Associates.

It was Lancia, however, that first integrated a radically new engine and chassis design into a postwar production car.  The Aurelia B10 Berlina first appeared in 1950, with a modern, all aluminum 60-degree V6 in front along with Lancia's famous sliding pillar front suspension. At the rear lived the clutch and a 4-speed transaxle, with trailing arm independent suspension and inboard drum brakes.  The doors opened along the car's centerline, without a central pillar.  The design provided performance (especially in the 2.0, 2.3 and 2.5 liter versions that followed the original 1.8), and unprecedented handling balance which allowed Lancias to beat more powerful cars in long-distance road races.   

Beginning in 1951 Pinin Farina provided the shorter-wheelbase B20 coupe ('52 example above), and it became the prototype for the modern GT car.  In 1954 PF released the B24 Spider, and in 1956 replaced it the B24 Convertible with winding windows shown below.  A De Dion tube replaced the trailing arm rear suspension on the B20 in 1954; all the open cars had that feature.  And all Aurelias reflected a kind of serious, practical (though costly) modern design approach that characterized a company run by engineers.

If the Lancia Aurelia was the most modern early postwar car in engineering terms, the Citroen DS 19 was perhaps the first modernist car. When the Traction Avant's design engineers Léfebvre (chassis) and Flaminio Bertoni (body) decided to surpass their masterpiece from 1934, they started with a clean sheet of paper for everything but the engine, which in deference to fuel costs was the 1.9 liter OHV four.  Everything else might have come from a science fiction movie, including the 4-wheel independent hydropneumatic suspension with adjustable ride height, the disc brakes, and of course the front-wheel drive. An engine-driven pump provided power assistance to steering and brakes, and to the adjustable suspension.  The transmission was unusual too; semi-automatic and clutchless, with shifting assistance provided by hydraulics.  When first shown at the Paris Salon in autumn of 1955, the DS19 attracted crowds like no other car...

And it was a modernist car in the same sense that the steel and glass Case Study houses being built in California were modernist houses.  Lines were aerodynamic, clean and spare, without reference to traditional norms or expectations, in the same spirit as Charles and Ray Eames' molded plywood chairs. Citroen's designers presented their drivers with a single-spoke steering wheel, avoiding the "lance effect" of earlier steering columns.  In a similar way that modern architects adapted industrial components to housing, the DS19's rear fenders could be removed by undoing a single bolt, and the adjustable height control could be used when changing a flat...

In the Fifties and Sixties, Americans who drove Citroens lived in, or aspired to live in, these kinds of houses. They sat in Eames lounge chairs and read stories by Isaac Asimov, while listening to Dave Brubeck on their Heathkit stereos.  They'd built those stereos from kits, because after all, they were engineers, or school teachers...like mine.  She gave me my first ride in a Citroen DS.

The roof was formed in fiberglass while the body was steel.  At the front, conventional grilles were eliminated, and air intakes were formed into the bumper and below it. The pillars framing the panoramic windshield are remarkably thin. The lights at the rear of the roof were provided to catch the attention of following drivers, and distract onlookers from a drop in height between the rear roof surface and the rear window.

Later versions included Chapron*-bodied coupes and convertibles like the one below, a less costly ID19 with manual 4-speed gearbox, and break (station wagon) models. Larger engines, still inline fours, were eventually offered in 2.1 and 2.3 liters.

Even though the DS had relatively limited influence on the design of cars that were not CItroens, its 20-year production career as essentially the same design makes it a strong contender for the most successful (and in engineering terms, perhaps the most obsessive) modernist car, if not the first modern one.  Floating along the boulevard in a DS, it was hard to deny the notion that engineering innovation had already made the world a better place, and that we were somehow already living in the future...

*Footnote:  In these posts, Hans Ledwinka's designs for Tatra, and Tatra's successful postwar lawsuit against VW, are reviewed in "Cars & Ethics: A Word or Two on VW", from 11-27-15.  Cisitalia was the focus of  "The Etceterini Files Part 11: Fiats as Fine Art", from 4-22-17.  Chapron-bodied Citroens and other French makes are featured in "The French Line Part 3: Henri Chapron", posted on 2-12-20.

Color Photo Credits:  
All color photos are by the author.

Monochrome Photo Credits:  
Tatra Type 77:  Tatra Works (now Tatra Trucks a.s.)

Cord 810 Prototype:  angelfire.com

Cord 810 Weschester rear view:  Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club (www.acdclub.org)

Cord 810 Phaeton:  paper-dragon.com 

Cisitalia 202 CMM front view:  wikimedia commons
Cisitalia 202 CMM rear view:   Danville Concours d'Elegance

Cisitalia 202 advertising:  Cisitalia Automobili
1947 Studebaker:  The Studebaker National Museum
Lancia Aurelia B10 Berlina:  imcdb.org

Citroen DS-19 overhead view with crowd:  revivaler.com
Citroen DS 19 dash:  en.wheelsage.org
Citroen overhead front view:  netcarshow.com

Case Study 9 House:  br.pinterest.com
Eames Lounge Chair:  Herman Miller

Vanishing Roadside Attraction: WPA Post Offices

Demonstrators gathered at the Bronx General Post Office in autumn of 2013 to demand that it be saved, not just as a building, but as their post office. The structure, designed by Thomas Harlan Ellett, was completed in 1937 and designated a New York City Landmark in 1975; it made the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.  The massive brick masonry structure with its tall marble-faced arches owes something to the modernist as well as neoclassical movements of the Thirties, and the exterior features two stone sculptures, "Noah" by Charles Rudy and "The Letter" by Henry Kreis.

The Bronx G.P.O. occupies the entire block on the Grand Concourse between 149th and 150th Streets, and its expansive granite terrace reinforces its role as a public space.  The U.S. Postal Service is popular with the public, with approval ratings hovering between 84 and 91%. When the above crowd gathered, they were responding to moves by the Post Office to sell off hundreds of properties as part of cost-saving measures. The cost-saving measures, in turn, were prompted by a 2006 law passed by Congress requiring the Postal Service to fund its pensions for the next 75 years.  A careful search will reveal no privately-owned entities required by law to fund their pensions for the 75 years ahead, and very few entities of any kind with their public approval routinely averaging well over 80%...

Around 1,100 post offices were built during the New Deal, many as part of Works Progress Administration efforts to create jobs and offer improved mail service.  They have proven to be popular buildings, partly because of their style and solidity of construction, and also because of the public art that was included in the projects from their inception...  

Inside the Bronx GPO, 13 murals called "Resources of America" were completed by Ben Shahn and his wife, Bernarda Bryson, in 1939. These tempera-on-plaster frescoes were landmarked along with the building's interior in 2013, the year of the demonstration, and the year before the Bronx GPO was sold to developers...

Unlike contemporary work by artists like Charles Sheeler, the images by Shahn and Bryson exalt  the humans rather than the machines.  The government contract was awarded as a result of a blind competition, after Shahn and his wife has already achieved some fame in the art world...

When the building was sold for $19 million to a developer in 2014, Studio V Architecture created an extensive scheme to adapt the building to host mixed uses including retail and restaurants, and to save the murals.  But the initial effort collapsed, the building was sold again in 2018, and as of 2019 the project was only partly complete, with a rooftop restaurant open at present.  In the meantime, by April 2019 Bronx residents had lodged complaints with their Congressional representative about delays in mail delivery.  This was before a newly-appointed Postmaster General took further steps to sideline mail-sorting equipment and reduce staff hours. This was also before the full impact of a global pandemic could be absorbed, along with the effects on medical supply deliveries by slowdowns in mail...

Across the country in Oak Park, Illinois, a new post office designed by architects White and Weber began construction in 1933, the worst year of the Depression, and after Congressional action in 1935 to provide about $70,000 of added funding, was finally finished in August of 1936. This New Deal post office is still serving its original purpose...

The Oak Park Post Office at 901 Lake Street has always had good architectural company. Right across North Kenilworth Avenue at its intersection with Lake Street is a seminal work of Prairie Style public architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple*, completed in 1908...

The completion of the work was celebrated with a postcard, complete with pastel colors straight out of National Geographic.  Note that there's a bit more traffic in the 1936 postcard shot than in the monochrome construction picture from the depths of the Depression, three years before... 

This is what the Oak Park Post Office on Lake Street looks like today.  The stripped-down neoclassicism of the limestone exterior has weathered well, and the Streamline Moderne grillwork above the entry, with its stylized tribute to the history of American transport from horses and covered wagons to monoplanes, has been preserved.

The skylit interior of the Oak Park Post Office has retained its original materials and finishes, along with elegant lighting fixtures echoing Art Deco and Streamline Moderne... 

Also inside are J.Theodore Johnson's four murals, completed in 1939, telling stories from American history. This one is entitled "La Salle's Search for Tonti, 1680".  As with many murals from the WPA period, the viewpoint is that of the European settlers rather than that of the continent's original inhabitants.

                                        

Way out West, the City of Golden, Colorado went through five different post office locations before acquiring a New Deal post office in 1940.  Designed by Louis A. Simon, its plan and form was adapted to a number of other New Deal post offices.  It's still in service, and is shown below in its original form, with copper roof shape and rooftop lantern echoing the land forms of the mesas beyond...

An awkward entry enclosure added in 1959 mars the clean lines of the original, but the building is well maintained, and serves a growing Front Range community...

The interior of the Golden Post Office is more modest in scale and ambition than the Oak Park one, but like Oak Park it offers a generous helping of public art.  Kenneth Evett painted "Building the New Road" in oils and tempera in 1941 as a WPA project, after studying with Thomas Hart Benton.  It depicts a lunchtime break in the building of a road in Clear Creek Canyon (I've been on that road).  The painting combines romanticism and realism, depicting workers of different races, their wives and children, and some softening touches contrasting with the hard landscape...including a little girl feeding a chipmunk, a horse waiting for some hay, and two dogs possibly scheming how to steal some lunch. It's a vision of people working together to build their way out of hard times.  It wasn't the way the country always worked, but it was the way school kids were taught it should work.  Less than 3 decades later, it was a country that sent explorers to the moon...

A few miles to the south and east, this South Denver post office was completed in 1940 with funding from the U. S. Treasury. The symmetrical facade echoes the spare, modern classicism of other Federally-funded projects during this era, but the mix of bricks and limestone suit the smaller scale, and the hipped roof with its red clay tiles may be a nod to the region's history as well as its propensity for snow.

Inside, there's nothing as grand or expansive as the Bronx or Oak Park post offices, just a series of linked spaces providing counters for mail service and places for customers to stand.  There is a mural, however, that's been obscured by a clunky lighting installation...

When you get past that industrial lighting you realize that there is something to see here, and that the painter, Ethel Magafan, treated "The Horse Corral" with affection and a robust sense of form. The tempera work was completed in 1942, a time when the outcome of the wars then raging in Europe and the Pacific was much in doubt.  Still, the artist seems to find her perspective on man and nature as fitting together in a kind of essential harmony, with the curves of living creatures echoing the shapes of the hills beyond. There's a kind of optimism here too, optimism that might have been hard for many to maintain as the world lurched from a global depression into global war. It's an attitude that may serve us at the present moment, if we can find it somewhere under that Western sky...

*Footnote:  For an earlier essay on a WPA project, see "Roadside Attraction: The Beach Chalet, San Francisco", posted March 25, 2016.  For a photo essay on Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style architecture in Oak Park, including the Unity Temple, see "Chicago: City of Architecture, Film and Ideas Part 1", from Nov. 2, 2017.

Photo Credits: 

Top:  New York Daily News  

2nd & 3rd:  6sqft.com

4th & 5th:  welcome2thebronx.com

6th:  Studio V Architecture, reproduced at newyorkyimby.com

7th, 9th & 12th:  livingnewdeal.org

8th:  the author

9th:  digitalcommonwealth.org

10th:  pinterest.ie

11th & 13th:  livingnewdeal.org

12th:  Kimberly Ah

14th:  City of Golden, Colorado

15th thru 17th:  the author

18th:  livingnewdeal.org

19th & 20th (bottom):  the author