Farewell to the Ozoner

It appears after years of talk and speculation, the end is here for the Cottage View drive in. 

Other than riding my bike past it, I have no ties the facility, so I can’t regale anyone with wacky Cottage View escapades (and even if I could, would the statute of limitations have expired yet?)

Although it dates back to 1933 in New Jersey, the drive in is most associated with the post-war exuberance of the 1950s and 1960s. Some have referred to this period of time as “mid-century modern” era.

If a theme park were to be built based upon the mid-century modern period, it might be one where the visitors might not need to leave their car much, if at all.  From the drive-in restaurants and their car hops, the drive-in movies, and the emergence of large, free-parking shopping centers like Southdale, it was clear that we were creating a “mobile society”, and specifically an automobile one.

The “old” was being discarded, perhaps too often and too frequently. Old buildings and old neighborhoods fell to the wrecking balls, replaced by ultra-modern International Style buildings and interstate highways. Minneapolis alone demolished one-quarter of its downtown in this time, leaving a dense core, but a mind-numbing array of surface parking lots.

There were reasons why this culling of the old happened. 

When one looks at the late 1940s and early 1950s, one just needs to remember that, between World War II and the Great Depression, the built environment was fairly static.  Very few were constructing new skyscrapers, new housing developments, or renovating what was already there—the money wasn’t there, and if the money was, the materials were in short supply. 

The equivalent of a generation had gone by with very little private sector development, redevelopment, renovation, or, in some cases, maintenance. The old suddenly looked very old, and this reminded many of the years of economic and military struggle.

When the building resumed, the world, not just the architectural world, had changed. The art-deco 1920s and 1930s, with its ornamentation and motifs had given way to the un-ornamented, balanced International Style. 

The Empire State Building, which every child seems to draw when told to draw a skyscraper, was suddenly passé and the world (at least in architectural and planning tomes) would be filled with these large, inverted shoe-box type structures.  The ranch (or rambler, if you prefer) with all of its assembly-line boxiness, became the house of choice instead of the more ornamented bunglalows.

In these tomes, interstates would whisk us rapidly from our job to these cheerful suburban ranch homes with our cheerful stay-at home mothers, perfect 2.5 children, dog, picket fence, and jovial neighbor.  Then we’d pile everybody into the family car, go to the drive in restaurant and end the evening at the drive-in movie.

As a child of the 1970s and 1980s, I missed much of the drive-in heyday and caught the beginning of the emergence of the drive-throughs.  I watched the two drive-in restaurants in town eventually close, one becoming a small office and the other converting to a service station.  I witnessed the drive-in theater lose the battle to television, close and become a gravel pit.  The 1920’s era bank, ivy covered and built of brick in an era when banks tried to show their fiduciary safety and soundness through vigorously serious architecture, replaced by a modern, breezy building with two drive-through lanes.

The pace of change has quickened.  Many of these mid-century monuments to newness and exuberance are themselves falling to the wayside, replaced by the things we now deem new and exuberant.  Some, like the old Guthrie Theater and Minnegasco building, and, it would appear, the Cottage View, will go with public scrutiny.  Many others will disappear with their names relegated to dusty folders in a planning department or in the files of the wrecking company.

This rapid pace of change, societal, technological, and economic has doomed many of the gigantic screens like the Cottage View.  Around 4,000 “ozoners” were spread across the land at their peak, now their numbers are less than 400.  Some have become office parks, some housing developments, a few, like the one in my hometown, a gravel pit.   The Cottage View site will soon house that paragon of ubiquitous mediocrity, a Wal*Mart. 

The City of Cottage Grove will be happy because of the increased property tax revenues, the owners of the Cottage View will be happy because they got a fair price for their long-held investment, many residents will be happy to have yet another retailer.  

I suppose that as a non-Cottage Grove resident, non-drive in aficionado, and not the planner that has to deal with the multiple development headaches that certain Arkansas-based retailers create, I don’t have a reason to be glum.  But for some reason, it’s a little disappointing to lose the unique to the common.

And that’s the view from the old steel drafting table.