Fountain Plaza and Modernist Office Block, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Fountain Plaza and Modernist Office Block, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Fountain Plaza and Modernist Office Block, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-662D27

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Somebody's planning committee decided this new office block needed a fountain out front, on the theory that water shooting into the air is what separates a serious institution from a parking lot. The building behind it does its part too, all cantilevered floors and ribbon windows, the International Style's promise that the future would be rectangular and glazed. Four sets of jets throw water in tidy cones, proof that municipal budgets in this decade ran to hydraulics as well as concrete.

The photograph was taken from inside a moving car, through glass that has smeared the whole scene into a soft blue-green wash, which is either an accident of a Sunday drive or the deliberate record of a man who refused to stop the vehicle for architecture. Nobody in frame is looking at the fountain. It performs anyway, on schedule, for whoever happens to be passing.

That's the quiet joke of civic fountains from this era: they were built to be admired, not simply glimpsed from a windshield at thirty miles an hour, and yet the windshield view turned out to be exactly how most people actually experienced them.

The historian's note

Fountain plazas paired with slab-form office buildings became a standard feature of urban redevelopment and corporate campus design across North America during the 1950s. The multi-jet candelabra fountain, typically fed by a recirculating pump system installed in the plaza deck, was a common civic amenity meant to signal modernity and municipal investment following postwar construction booms.

The building shown, with its cantilevered upper floors, exposed structural grid, and continuous window bands, is characteristic of International Style commercial architecture common to redevelopment zones and new corporate headquarters built in this decade. Such structures were frequently sited adjacent to public plazas designed for pedestrian use, though the specific building and city here cannot be established from the available evidence.

The vantage point, shot through a vehicle window, is typical of amateur travel photography of the period, when tourists and commuters alike documented new civic architecture from cars rather than on foot.

Subjects & keywords — each links to a search

civic fountain·modernist architecture·1950s·urban plaza·International Style·car window view·mid-century design·office building·water jets·postwar optimism·teal tone·decorative print·hazy composition·research reference·urban redevelopment

plaza fountainobject · subject

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Particulars

Creator: Unattributed
Date: 1950–1959
Place: — modernist plaza fountain photographed from a passing car, exact city unidentified
Subject: Fountain plaza before a modernist office building
Original format: jpg
Original held: Yes, by the archive
Rights: Open