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Lyon’s Coffee Shop, San Bruno, CA 1962. Found via Googie Art.

I grew up around Googie Architecture. It was just there. Space age-looking buildings, funky decor and rocks in the walls. Lots of rocks. Flintstones-like, but where the Jetson’s were running the quarry.

The 24 hour Lyon’s in San Bruno (see above) was the high school hangout. Long weird nights. In college, those weird nights spread to the other Lyon’s in San Mateo, San Carlos and Daly City. Denny’s was the alternative.

The style’s roots can be traced back to Frank Lloyd Wright and Tallesin West. Architect John Lautner designed the first Googie structure in 1949 and it was panned by critics. The firm of Armet and Davis designed most of the rest.

Most Googie Architecture has been torn down, demolished; replaced by new prefabricated structures. Walmarts, Officemax, Honda dealers. In the past few years, a Sacramento-based Lyon’s and Eppie’s bit the dust. Another googie Eppie’s is over off Business 80, awaiting its fate.

some googie linx
[1] Here’s a link to a site featuring many of A&D’s presentation renderings (used to illustrate this post).

[2] And here’s a link to THE book on Googie, written by Alan Hess.

[3] This is Chris Jepsen’s long running Googie Architecture site.

[4] And here’s another link to my googie fonts, Martini at Joe’s.

Martini at Joe’s was one of my favorite projects; I drank a lot of Martinis as part of the research and hung out with many Tiki people too.

The Martini at Joe’s fonts – which show up in very odd places – is the little bit I could do to preserve what is a dying California style.

tags: cool finds, design, design history, fonts, thoughts, typography // 3 comments  . . .