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One of my favorite programs on public radio was one from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation called The Comfort Zone, where one could hear “[host] Alan Saunders debate and celebrate the cultural significance of architecture and design, landscape, gardens and food.” I started listening in early 2004, but sadly, its last episode aired on January 22, 2005 and was replaced by a general-interest program with a plan that sounds a lot like APM’s Weekend America. The show archives list lots of past programs I’d love to listen to, but they’re rather hard to come by. The weekly programs were available as a RealAudio streams, some of which I remembered to capture and save before they expired from the site. I checked into getting past programs on CD, but it’s expensive, as most custom-ordered copies of shows and transcripts seem to be. In this case, it’s AU$60.50 per program. Just over two years of programs are available, but that’s over 100 shows, or $6000, well beyond my weekly public radio expenditures. I even checked P2P filesharing networks, but This American Life and Wiretap are hard enough to come by, so it’s not surprising that there’s no Comfort Zone. Maybe some day the ABC will open up and just make old programs available, though I can’t say I’m that optimistic. Perhaps a bit more realistically, maybe they’ll dump more/all of their archives onto some pay service like audible.com. Though it seems less and less likely as time passes, there’s always the chance that a public radio organization in the US might pick up old episodes of the show. For now, however, these shows will molder away somewhere deep in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation archives.

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The Seattle Monorail Project was far from the first abandoned transit plan for the city. Seattle had interurban and electric streetcars over a century ago, but by 1926, there was a desire for real rapid transit, like in Chicago or New York:

August 16, 1926.

At the regular monthly meeting of the Seattle City Planning Commission, held August 10, 1926, the following motion was carried unanimously:

That the report and findings of the Rapid Transit Committee be adopted and transmitted to the City Council with the following recommendations.

1st. That the City council of the City of Seattle should at once proceed to the end that adequate rapid transit facilities shall be provided the citizens at as early date as possible.

2d. Adequate rapid transit facilities for the immediate future can be attained, with reasonable and practicable financial accomplishment of construction and operation, as shown in the report hereto attached.

Respectfully submitted,
CITY PLANNING COMMISSION,
By
B. S. GOODWIN,
President

CHAS. H. ALDEN,
Secretary

By 1928, there was a comprehensive proposal that included station drawings, route maps, projected traffic graphs and numbers, and lots of stuff you’d see in modern transit planning. More info on the 1926-1928 “Trimble plan”:

• The proposed lines on Google Maps
• Original University/Westlake map
• Original Downtown/South Lake Union map
• Subway station drawing
• Subway station/tunnel cross-section

In 1957, planning for I-5 was underway and a engineer M. O. Anderberg authored a plan to run rapid transit via I-5 from Tacoma to Everett, with a tunnel through downtown. North of downtown it would have ran on the lower deck of I-5 with the express lanes. In other sections, it would have run in the median, similar to Chicago’s Blue Line. See the 1957 plan on Google Maps for route and station details.

In 1967, the newly formed Metro (Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle) put forth a transit plan that’s probably an ancestor of the light-rail now under construction. By 1985, the plan envisioned a rail transit line through downtown, Queen Anne, Magnoila/Interbay, Ballard, and Greenwood, another line from downtown through Capitol Hill to the U District, with a potential extension to Bothell, another line through Beacon Hill and Mercer Island to Bellevue, with potential extension to Redmond, another line through Rainier Valley to Tukwila and Renton, with potential connection to the Bellevue segment, and potential spur to West Seattle. Needless to say, the Metro plan 20 years after 1985 is significantly less ambitious. Check out the 1967 plan on Google Maps.

In 1979, there was a modest proposal to extend the monorail by adding a loop around Seattle Center, connecting the monorail to the edge of Queen Anne, and adding a stop in Belltown.

In 1997, Initiative 41 proposed a 40-mile two-line monorail, criscrossing the city. That led to the more modest Green Line, which, while closer than most of the other plans, never saw the light of day. Check out the Green Line on Google Maps.

Finally, I find that the more I dig, the more plans I find. I’ve seen references to a plan from 1920, Historylink reports a 1910 monorail plan, plus there have been various intermediate and scaled-back plans from Metro (like the Northwest Corridor plan) and others, and more informal plans and even a student thesis on the subject.

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Around 1960, Ladislav Sutnar created a booklet for AT&T’s Bell System called How to Show Telephone Numbers On Letterheads, introducing the format for long-distance numbers we know today: (212) 222-2222. This booklet contains 15 example letterheads with Sutnaresque designs with a few different options for displaying 10-digit telephone numbers. From the introduction:

This booklet contains some new contemporary letterhead designs for business and personal stationery. / A variety of ways to display telephone numbers consistent with attractive design is shown. / For maximum usefulness and clarity always show all 10 numerals of the number [include the Area Code]. / The Area Code may be identified by using the words “Area Code” and separated from the local number by extra space, as shown in this book. Or, if space is limited, the Area Code may be identified by setting it in parentheses. / It may be appropriate to use the word “telephone” to distinguish the telephone number from other numbers on the letterhead. / Place the letters “TWX” before the ten-digit teletypewriter number.

Check out my scan of the booklet.

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Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, is a remarkably well-preserved example of Modernist architecture. A colony of Italy from 1890 to 1941, Eritrea and its capital city were built up during the Fascist era as a base for greater colonization in Africa. Since World War II, Eritrea has struggled for independence (it was part of Ethopia from 1961 to 1991), leaving Asmara pickled in the brine of decades of conflict. Asmara: Africa’s Secret Modernist City shows a beautifully preserved and remarkably peaceful city, and details some of the city planning and unbuilt architecture during Mussolini’s reign.

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I love the book SED: Stunning Eastern Design and its miniature half-clone DDR Design, and now I’ve discovered a newer, bigger book on DDR (East German) design, called DDR Design (unrelated to the other DDR Design above), by Günter Höhne (English-language info here). It’s in German only, but lots of large color pictures make it a great piece of extant design porn nonetheless. In the same series as DDR Design, but by different authors are DDR Kochbuch (DDR Cookbook), DDR Backbuch (DDR Baking Book), and DDR Getränkebuch (DDR Drink Book). They’re in German only, and more text-heavy, but design freaks, and English-speakers who care to translate recipes to attain some weak sense of Ostalgia might still get from them some enjoyment.

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The particular circumstances of the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or East Germany) meant little focus on marketing and little attention on design. Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, some of this design began to be recognized. The show Design in der DDR in Stuttgart in 1988 was perhaps the first recognition of extant design. Taschen puts out two books (with nearly the same content) of some of these Wall-era products: the smaller but newer DDR Design and the larger SED: Stunning Eastern Design. If you’re looking for more instant DDR gratification, the website DDR Alltagskultur (Everyday DDR Culture) provides images for an amazingly wide (and still growing) list of East German products. The site is in German, but language skills are not necessary to enjoy the design, just scroll down in the lefthand frame. Language skills may be needed to enjoy all of the books on their Buchtip(p)s pages. I plan on purchasing one or two in the hopes that they’ll include plenty of color pictures. Finally, a key to the images: on the left is the East German Club-Cola (now available again [de] for those with Ostalgie). On the right is the modern (but still very Extant) Pepsi Schwip Schwap[de] (a German cola/orange drink, not unlike OK Soda). Poor Schwip Schwap seems to be heavily outmarketed [de] by Coca-Cola’s Mezzo Mix [de].

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