Heroes in Need of Friends - Page 2

Of somewhat higher priority to preservationists like South Bay historian/author Heather David are the other ten buildings in the story, especially the trio that stand in her beloved San Jose.

"My passion is for commercial architecture rather than residential," says David, author of two books on mid-century modern who was profiled in this space last week. Weinstein conferred with David about threats to several buildings in his story.

"The Bob's Big Boy's going to be demolished unless we can find someone to move it," David warns about one of them, the Googie-style, former hamburger joint on Winchester Boulevard that is now closed and slated to be replaced by the Santana West Tech Campus. "That's kind of depressing to me, but it is what it is."

Also threatened by the planned Santana West campus is a longtime endangered species in the Bay, the Century 21 dome movie theater. With one destroyed in Pleasant Hill and two others in San Jose, the remaining one at Winchester and Olsen Drive is truly a vanishing breed of architecture.

"They have a proposed adaptation," sniffed David of the plan to strip the dome and reuse it as a parapet. She has a better idea, which ties in with celebrating her current preservation cause.

"If you're not going to use it for a movie theater, why not use it for a Bay Area sign museum?" she suggested of the theater built in 1964. "It's dark in there anyway, [and]…neon signs look best in the dark."

As much as she'd love to see her reuse dream come true as a ringleader of the new San Jose Signs Project, David is in some respects resigned to a lesser fate for several of the CA-Modern story's 12 buildings.

"I'm saddened by all the projected loss, and all the loss that has occurred," said the MCM activist. With specific regard to the Santana West project, she said, "I'm trying to brace myself."

Other structures featured in Dave Weinstein's story maintain sometimes-tenuous existences, respectively, in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Palm Springs, La Puente, and Covina. In many of these cities, David noted, high-density residential is being built to meet California's purported housing shortage, often replacing historic architecture.

"It's displacing, I think, a whole lot of beautiful buildings," she said with an advocate's remorse.

To learn more about which buildings in your area are in need of appreciation and advocacy, check out 'Not Long for This World?,' a sneak preview of the new spring 2019 issue of CA-Modern magazine.