The Space Needle: Unfinished Business

Man, I miss the Space Age. I had about a year of unbridled American technical and cultural optimism, between the ages of four and five. It was nice. And here in Seattle we have a prominent reminder of that era, which has a certain beauty but is now beloved mostly for a kind a high kitsch - the Space Needle. Based on a German radio tower, it is nonetheless the most graceful of this type of building.

Long ago, there was a conspiracy (I believe our Exiled President may have had something to do with this) to torture the Laird by having an entire high school ask him, over the course of a day, the following question:

"Say, Vonn, do you know who named the Space Needle?"

The brilliance of this ploy lead to much consternation, but in the resulting confusion, we never found out who named the Space Needle.

The University of Washington has a set of fascinating drawings and paintings for the Space Needle and the Pavillion. This brochure from the 1962 Seattle World's fair presents the predictably hilarious and slightly prescient vision of the future:

Then comes a burst of yellow-golden summer sunlight and a home unlike any other you have seen appears. You notice the indoor swimming pool and garden, the private heliport, the way your home of tomorrow rotates to take advantage of the sun. You marvel at the slip-proof bathroom, wall to wall television and flick-of-the switch windows.

"Does it have a radar controlled supersonic, neutronic fission freezer?" It is a woman's voice.

"I'm not wise enough to predict all the inventions of tomorrow," comes the answer. "But certainly you'll have undreamed of conveniences. Your kitchen will be a miracle of push-button efficiency. Your telephone will be cordless. You'll see who you are talking to. You'll change the interior colors of your home to suit your mood."

Instantly, the lighting of the home before you changes to create a new, equally attractive decor.

Now you are in a rust-red world of autumn. A commuter's gyrocopter comes into view, its motor emitting hardly more than a purr. You gaze, fascinated, at cars with engines the size of a typewriter, planes that fly to any spot in the world in an hour's time, rocket belts that enable a man to stride thirty feet.

"We'll work shorter hours," your mysterious guide continues. "We'll have more time for art, sports and hobbies. Some of us will fly; some drive our air cars. But most of us will use rapid transit jet-propelled monorail systems."

The scene changes to reveal an office of tomorrow, its computers producing a metallic cacophony of sound. Automatic door openers, self-correcting office machines and TV telephones are as commonplace as today's typewriter.

"Executives of the next century will earn a minimum of twelve thousand dollars a year for a twenty-four hour work week," you are told.

You hear a little girl's voice. "Why? Where? What for? There's so much I want to know about yesterday, today and tomorrow." Now you are in a school of tomorrow . . . its walls made of jets of air, its tables standing on invisible legs, its floating canvas roof controlled to catch the sun. Memory-retention machines whir in the background. Television screens mirror the day's lessions.

The Space Needle turned out to an exclaimation point at the end of the modernist sentence, (one peaking perhaps at the '39 Chicago World's Fair, denuded of its revolutionary origins, fully digested by capitalism.) It was a final thrust of uncritical faith in technology, planning, and universality in human culture.

Here, for no reason, is Sasquatch playing drums on the Space Needle.

The problem is, although the architects were John Graham (the designer of the nation's first shopping mall, Seattle 's Northgate Mall,) Victor Steinbrueck; UW engineering professor Al Miller; artist Earle Duff; designer John Ridley, and design partner Nate Wilkinson, and the organizers were the Pentagram Corporation (maybe it IS the center of evil!), it is still unclear who actually named it.

I may call over there later today. Stay tuned.