why don't we have whimsical buildings anymore?

Streamline Moderne, utopian architecture and silly little ferries

At the intersection of 11th Street and 4th Avenue in Manhattan is a post office. Though it straddles the street corner it has no corners itself; it is not angular but softly curved, like the smooth surface of a cake across which icing has been paddled. Standing kitty-corner, the building’s curvature is slight; this changes as you walk closer, or if you come upon it from the near sides of its intersecting streets, in which case what seems at first an unremarkable if elegant two-storey structure becomes a surprise when, rather than making a sharp turn, as it should, it bends in a pleasing visual continuity, like an infinity pool.

Such stately columns! (source)

The United States Post Office Cooper Station (named after Peter Cooper, the 19th century industrialist who founded Cooper Union) was built in 1936-7, one of many beautiful public buildings to come out of the New Deal. (It’s also where the hapless Newman works in Seinfeld). It is an example of a type of Art Deco architecture called Streamline Moderne, a subset of the genre characterised by, well, streamlined design. The buildings are less ornate than Art Deco, and perhaps more functional, but it is a functionality that does not sacrifice aesthetic grace, and may even accentuate such grace. Cooper Station is on the more sober end of Streamline Moderne, which encompasses the subtle, the whimsical and, at its most extreme, the ridiculous (which I have no objection to).

My favourite example of Streamline Moderne architecture is Tiong Bahru, a neighbourhood in Singapore, where the typical features of the style have been tweaked to suit the tropical climate. Walking around this area is a total delight, because there is so much to see — open-air markets, two-storey shopfronts, multi-level housing blocks (nicknamed “aeroplane towers” because of their resemblance), all showcasing different interpretations of Streamline Moderne.

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Apartment buildings that look like ocean liners, food markets that look like air traffic control towers or spaceships. Streamline Moderne architects took inspiration from (and lent it to) the aerodynamism of the cars, trains, planes and ships (and airships) of the 1920s and 1930s.

The Supermarine S.6B, a British racing seaplane, built in 1931 (source)

One would be remiss not to include the poor old blimp – here’s one flying over New York in 1933 (source)

The LMS Princess Coronation Class 6229 Duchess of Hamilton, a British “streamliner” train built in 1938 (source)

Beginning in the 1930s, the Mercury class of streamliner trains traveled between various American cities (source)

Probably in part because of the association with blimps — which represent so concisely one branching-off of early 20th century industrialization that we decided not to follow — Streamline Moderne offers a compelling kind of retrofuturism, and evokes the aesthetic possibilities of an alternative history of (post)industrial development, more visually appealing to me at least than another popular retrofuturist vision, that of steampunk. The Second World War, of course, was the great interruption to this architectural movement; by peacetime, the mood had shifted, and the utopian whimsy of Streamline Moderne design must, in its hopefulness and its humor, have seemed awfully out of place and out of date.

And the whimsy could devolve into the downright silly, as with the Streamline Moderne Coca-Cola Bottling Plant in Los Angeles, built in 1939, which gives us a very literal take on an ocean liner, complete with portholes and a ship’s deck and flybridge. Even the flagpole looks like a mast. But isn’t it great?

Go see it if you’re in LA! (source)

The nostalgic draw of the “futuristic” world of these designs is made more acute when one thinks of — to give an example of an iconic early 20th century mode of transport — the cruise ships we have today, compared to those we had and might have had (admittedly some ideas were, even back then, a little too far-fetched to ever materialise) if history had taken us in another aesthetic direction. Take the Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, launched in 2024 as the world’s largest cruise ship, and schlepping its terrible way across the oceans as we speak:

The Icon of the Seas cruise ship (source)

I personally prefer such vessels as the MV Kalakala, a delightful Streamline Moderne ferry that served Puget Sound in Washington state between 1935 and 1967. (Just don’t look up the Kalakala’s fate because it’s very depressing.)

The MV Kalakala, a Streamline Moderne ferry launched in 1935 (source)

Another view of the Kalakala in action. (source)

What do you think? Shall we bring it back?

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