'Mad Men' and architectural criticism

Ada Louise Huxtable was on "Mad Men" on Sunday night.

Well, not the noted architecture critic herself, who worked for the New York Times for two decades and continues to contribute reliably sharp pieces to the Wall Street Journal. Instead, her name came up early in the episode, set in 1963, as the show's ad executives were meeting with developers to discuss plans to knock down Penn Station to make way for the new Madison Square Garden. (The station was ultimately razed in 1966.)

After one of the agency execs reads from a Huxtable piece condemning the plans, one of the developers gives him a sour look. "Ada Louise Huxtable is as green as that folder," he retorts, gesturing toward a stack of collected press clippings and fliers protesting the proposed demolition. "People know she's an angry woman with a big mouth."

Huxtable, who essentially pioneered the job of daily newspaper architecture criticism, was arguably somewhat green in 1963; though born in 1921, she didn't take up her up her New York Times post until that year, after a stint at the Museum of Modern Art and several years as a contributor to Progressive Architecture and other magazines.

At first, the references to Huxtable and the Penn Station controversy seemed minor name-checks -- subtle signs of the show's much-noted obsession with getting its period details right. They were also reminiscent of a New Yorker cartoon, published in 1968, showing two construction workers at a building site. One of them, reading the newspaper, says to other of the steel skeleton rising behind them: "Ada Louise Huxtable already doesn't like it."

As it turned out, though, the conversation struck thematic chords that resonated through the entire episode: cycles of aging, loss and then renewal (what do you think that maypole scene was about, aside from probably telegraphing an affair between Don Draper and his daughter's teacher?); memory as measured against progress; and even California versus New York, which in Mad Men is shorthand for freedom versus responsibility and novelty versus history.

"I was in California," Don later tells one of the Madison Square Garden executives over pre-lunch cocktails. "Everything is new, and it's clean. The people are filled with hope. New York City is in decay. But Madison Square Garden -- it's the beginning of a new city on a hill."

As it turned out, the Garden actually helped produce not a city on a hill but the seeds of a powerful preservation movement, in Manhattan and elsewhere. Almost immediately, New York realized it had made an enormous blunder by knocking down one of its most remarkable pieces of architecture -- a building Huxtable later described as "McKim, Mead and White's Roman extravaganza in cream travertine and pink granite, later soot-darkened."

The episode was also a reminder of how much times have changed: These days, you might hear an ad executive complaining about the relative age and sluggishness of Los Angeles as compared to cities with high-speed rail lines and quickly mushrooming skylines. "I was in Dubai," our contemporary, Culver City version of Don Draper might say to a developer, fingering an Anchor Steam instead of a Manhattan. Or "I was in Shanghai ..."

-- Christopher Hawthorne

Photo: John Hamm as Don Draper. Credit: Associated Press/AMC

Comments

[frank A. Binder]

The maypole scene foreshadowed the late '60s.

[Lynn Mary]

I remember participating in the Maypole celebration while attending public elementary school in the late 1960s. We thought it was so cool with the ribbons and weaving in and out of the other dancing kids. When did the powers that be end this tradition?

[Ed]

Another good episode.. I like the (pop) cultural references as well.. (Patio soda.)

[Libby B.]

The maypole tradition was still alive in the 80's!

The best part of that scene, though, was Don feeling the grass with his fingertips as he watched the teacher, clearly yearning for the same carefree youthfulness.

[b]

So much is read into the show. Here are some of my takes:

Maypole is the changing tide to flower power. Grass a yearning for freshness and childhood (going up the country). Welcome to the birth of hippie and, of course, hippie chicks.

Note the casual sex, instigated by a women no less, in the next scene.

And the changing of the guard. The old joke (pull off your socks and grab something) for a past era.

The alcohol down the drain was not only a clever device to indicate a mind slipping, it also may symbolized the cocktail era coming to an end.

[verbwank]

I was in New York City advertising for four years - 69-73 and MAD MAN bang on portrays the terrifying tension, backstabbing and crash of careers ending and beginning explosively. But it has yet to point out how much fun the damned game is! Like killer football it is thrilling and addictive. Monetary, sexual rewards for creativity with art, o rbusiness inflame every hormone to burnout before 40. Maybe Mr. Weiner will devote a show to this fact - agencies were not concentration camps: they killed you with excitement and ferocious competitiveness. Ad vets know they will never have such a life again.

[anon]

ummm. is this really a story? i love a.l. huxtable and all, but i gotta say, is this important or interesting?

[Enrique Ramirez]

Thanks for the great post. Mad Men's set designers offer plenty for the architecturally-minded person to chew on. A little over a year ago, I wrote something about the depiction of architecture in Mad Men:

http://www.aggregat456.com/2008/08/madison-avenue-blues.html