Googie and Space-Age Architecture in the Intermountain West

When driving though the area encompassed by the boundaries of the Intermountain West, along decrepit highways and down thoroughfares, you might notice an interesting genre of architecture. Old motels, diners, coffee shops, and the occasional theater or bowling alley all united by a sort of hopeful and futuristic element in their design. Their day-glow colors have faded into pastels after decades under the unforgiving sun, and the businesses that once inhabited them have been long shuttered. These are the remains of the once prolific genre of googie architecture in the American West. Googie architecture was a decently popular architectural style in the mid-century. It came from the West, gaining a strong foothold in the sunny climates of Southern California and working its way eastward through the Southwest and beyond. The style is distinguished by a commitment to its futuristic theme. Steeply pitched roofs, large glass walls, boomerangs, atomic starbursts, bright colors and neon are all hallmarks of this mid-century style that experienced its biggest boom from the nineteen-forties up until the nineteen-seventies.

This tour delves into examples of googie and space-age architecture in the Intermountain West that have survived into the present day in more or less their original condition. Each exists as a physical location that visitors could, in theory, pack up their car and drive to today. Googie architecture may not have had the same kinds of reverberations that Brutalism or Bauhaus had on the architectural community, but the period and outlook it represents is important.

What about googie architecture makes it look “futuristic”? Even now decades after the architects of the style like Charles Deaton and Paul Revere Williams have died, there is still something in their dramatic designs that smack of the future. The smooth lines, aluminum finishes, and overall mod look of googie architecture brings to mind what people imagined the future to be. A streamlined future where buildings were reminiscent of the trends in contemporary art and design in the mid-century while also taking notes from the aesthetic trends in science fiction media of the time. Their futuristic facades were novel and full of promise in their original inceptions and have since become embodiment of a lost idea of the retro-future. Though the look of the retro-future never did come to be the dominant architectural style of the new millennium (or not yet at any rate) looking at googie architecture allows an observer to connect with the past’s vision of the future they currently inhabit, creating a connection across time.