Earlier this past fall, I featured the accomplishments of the City of Kokomo, Indiana in reinventing itself over the past few years, after two decades of
rust-belt, deindustrialized stagnancy.
Civic leadership successfully elicited a certain degree of buy-in among
its constituent, all toward sundry capital improvements, the likes of which
most similarly sized cities still only retain on their wish lists. The results are conspicuous. Kokomo has made formidable strides in
infrastructural improvements, mass transit, downtown revitalization, park
expansion, public art, and an ambitious International Baccalaureate exchange
program at the public schools—all while maintaining a balanced city budget. According to some of the city’s cheerleaders
for these expenditures, the overall ethos driving the city is far more upbeat
than it has been in years, despite the fact that, as recently as 2008, Forbes listed the city as one of America’s fastest dying towns. Perhaps that article served as a
wake-up call, because I’d be hard-pressed to imagine that recent visitors to
Kokomo’s downtown would ever see the city as dying—certainly in comparison to
dozens of other similarly sized cities across New York, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana that show little to no evidence of
revitalization at work.
The combined impact of these upgrades is inspiring. But none of them (with the possible exception
of the International Baccalaureate exchange) is particularly
groundbreaking. Virtually every
city these days has attempted revitalization through a certain combination of
sculptures/murals, streetscape improvements, heritage pedestrian/bike trails, new
parks, et cetera et cetera. These initiatives
seem to come from a City Planning 101 playbook. It’s as though cities have completely taken the bait from
the many national assessment tools created by various urban advocacy nonprofits
in order to gauge quality of life.
At the same time, the advisory committees that operate these
organizations (and thus create their highly subjective definitions of “quality
of life”) consist overwhelmingly of city planners and their lobbyist allies,
cajoling municipalities to eat out of their hands in a manner that smacks of
self-aggrandizement. To put it
more simply, cities like Kokomo strive for (and ultimately invest in) bike
lanes, mixed-use trails, or omnipresent bike racks, all in order to achieve and
flaunt that bronze rating from the League of Bicyclists, which in turn wins
free publicity for itself in the process.
I cynically alluded to this practice in Baton Rouge a few years ago.
I’m not trying to undermine or belittle these practices, nor
do I mean to pick on the League of American Bicyclists’ worthy mission. And the initiative that Kokomo has shown
these past few years is commendable—and the city has usually implemented these
upgrades far more smartly than one might see in a larger city like
Indianapolis. But the standards
for what constitutes a “livable” city seem to grow more uniform and homogenized
with each passing year that these standard-bearers of good urbanism grow in
influence. The remedy for economic
malaise increasingly seems to be the same everywhere, like a doctor who
prescribes cod liver oil for both arthritis and malaria. So it is with no small fanfare that I
declare how happy I am that a local entrepreneur in Kokomo has marched alongside
the corps of revitalizers, but to his own beat.
This whimsical structure, known as Storybook Express, opened
in 2012 at a long-vacant site at Sycamore Street and Apperson Way, just a few
blocks from the Howard County Courthouse.
Although it’s a convenience store, the unconventional, fairytale
appearance has prompted locals to christen it the “Harry Potter house”. Even from a distance, the building’s
densely ornamented façade and off-kilter massing and brickwork help distinguish
it.
But a closer look reveals the devil-may-care insertion of
neglected or discarded antiques into the masonry:
Notice the metal pig’s derriere rammed into the wood just
above the transom window.
More often than not, eye-catching façades such as these are
a total bust when viewed from less prominent angles. The designer puts all the mojo in the front view. But Storybook Express includes just as
much eccentric detail on the backside as well:
An old church inscription, a car’s suspension coil, antiquated
plumbing, and other unidentifiable bric-a-brac enhance the façade’s visual
interest. Even the relatively
conventional brick wall, used to elevate and protect the convenience store’s
HVAC equipment, deliberately employs an excessive amount of mortar to enhance
the multi-dimensionality. Look how
it oozes from between the bricks.
The western wall is equally whimsical and boasts the added
benefit of a drive-thru window, a relatively uncommon feature in convenience
stores.
But I have to confess that my favorite detail is the parking
lot, mainly because it would be so easy to settle for drab convention. But the brains behind Storybook Express
allowed the whimsy to permeate the entire design. The retaining wall adheres to the same pastiche as the
masonry:
And it takes real chutzpah to employ an unconventional
striping for a parking lot, a practice that in many cities would require
special approval:
Storybook Express would easily qualify as a great roadside
curiosity even if it sat in isolation.
But it is the culminating achievement of Fortune Management,
a local real estate development firm with holdings throughout the city,
including a few other developments in a similar vernacular. I found one of these other curiosities
on my own, at Markland Avenue and Calumet Street.
This structure, dating from 1999, hosts a nail salon.
Like Storybook Express, it applies the fanciful masonry mixed
with assorted folderol on all four sides.
Digging back a bit further in time, Fortune Management
adapted some brownfield sites into office space. The property at Markland and Washington previously hosted a
transmission repair shop that had clearly seen better days:
In 1995, Fortune Management transformed it into this:
And the company pioneered this aesthetic with a Shell
Station at Sycamore and Washington, way back in 1987. Before the redevelopment, it looked like this:
And afterwards:
These earlier efforts may appear less ostentatious than the
convenience store downtown, but they ascribe to the same spirit in their
design.
A recent interview with Fortune Management’s president,
Scott Pitcher, helped shed some light on his rationale. The firm has purchased and renovated
over 50 properties in the Kokomo area since its 1982 founding. Pitcher’s goal, even for the less
fanciful redevelopments, has been to employ high-quality materials from the
same time period as the original structure. More often than not, Fortune Management has rescued
materials from other buildings under demolition in Kokomo other various Indiana. Not surprisingly, the Storybook Express
convenience store featured in the first photos series was new construction on a
lot that the company had held in its portfolio for years. Although not a renovation, it
nonetheless consists primarily of repurposed material, while the customized
roof exclusively employed Kokomo craftspeople.
The ostensible “Harry Potter” references are a throwback to
a legitimate Storybook architectural style in vogue during the 1920s in
Hollywood. Despite the recession,
the time finally seemed right a few years ago for Pitcher to begin developing
Storybook Express in order to capitalize on the other revitalization efforts
that had taken place in downtown Kokomo.
He partnered with a local entrepreneur who was interested in opening a
convenience store at the site, and though it was inevitable that it would
require parking, the structure still engages Sycamore Street with a very small
setback, allowing the structure to accommodate vehicles and pedestrians in
nearly equal measure, as the somewhat blurry photo below still demonstrates:
What motivated Pitcher and his team to try this style? These sundry developments seem inspired
by both a love of vintage Hollywood movie sets as well as the plundering of
small-town antique shops, though they have also achieved statewide recognition
for persistent use of local material, winning an Indiana Green Business Award
in 2010. At the same time, I see little
evidence in Pitcher’s work that he was striving for broader recognition in the
architectural or artistic community.
He wasn’t trying to impress the New York art scene; he built this way
because he felt like it. I shy
away from the dubious label of “folk art” because it carries with it a whiff of
condescension—that folk artists are uncouth autodidacts who remain ignorant of
the preferred aesthetic standards and mores of the time. Pitcher knows exactly what he’s trying
to achieve, but Storybook Express and its cousins have flourished despite being
untethered to any broader cultural barometer. For me, the DIY framework by which these buildings came into
being can’t help but recall the work of Philadelphia artist Isaiah Zagar, who for decades has charmed his neighborhood through colorful mosaics and
found-object installations superimposed onto various buildings. The vast majority of Zagar’s corpus
remains concentrated along South Street and the adjacent blocks, such as the examples
below:
Obviously Scott Pitcher and Isaiah Zagar aren’t entirely
kindred spirits: Zagar self-identifies as an artist and Pitcher is first and
foremost a developer. And while
Zagar’s most widely recognized artistic output polka-dots the various workaday
streets of South Philly, his work also sits in the permanent collections of art
institutions both inside and outside of metro Philadelphia. Nonetheless, Zagar has admitted his
affinity with folk and visionary artists from across the globe, and he doesn’t
hesitate to identify as a “vernacular artist” because the majority of his
corpus thrives from decades of embedding himself in the community he loves,
rather than responding exclusively to the dictates of specific
commissions. Pitcher, meanwhile,
has indicated that any new Storybook project will likely take place far from
downtown Kokomo, since he feels a similar edifice will only dilute the impact
of Storybook Express (which, not surprisingly, has proven a resounding success
as a convenience store). He hopes to
forge his next venture in another smaller Indiana downtown, or perhaps even
something in Indianapolis.
What Zagar and Pitcher clearly share is an aesthetic vision
divorced from an overt context.
Zagar could have filled his murals with references to Jim Croce or
Marian Anderson or Mario Lanza, if he wanted to draw from South Philly’s
heritage of vocal musicians. He
could have partnered with a nonprofit to engage in a comprehensive
beautification campaign through targeted mosaic design and specific
locations. But the visual evidence
suggests neither of these. Nor
does Scott Pitcher seem to care if 1920s Hollywood (or Hogwarts) has anything
to do with Kokomo, the City of Firsts.
And therein lies the appeal.
Most of Kokomo’s other revitalization initiatives are sincere attempts
to jolt the city out of its multi-decade torpor by massaging the dormant
creative economy. Kokomo hopes to
retain its population through compelling quality of life amenities. But when every small city sees bike
lanes and murals as the remedy, couldn’t these urban organisms eventually
develop immunity to the treatment?
Sometimes individual ingenuity—the entrepreneurs who swim against the
current—can offer more long-term regenerative potential than all the social
policies a city council can conceive.
Kokomo’s future success will undoubtedly owes a great deal to committed
and talented civic leadership, but its distinctiveness may rely heavily upon a playful
little building near downtown called Storybook Express.
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