188 - Fast Food and Radical Rooflines: Helen Fong Shapes Los Angeles Coffee Shops

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Helen Fong, one of the few women practicing architecture in the US in the 1950s, is best known for her “Googie” California coffee shop architectural style. Pann’s Coffee Shop, Denny's, Bob's Big Boy— those bold, iconic, futuristic restaurants of the 1950s and 60s— there are thousands of them, not just in Los Angeles, where they were born, but across the country. These family restaurants are core to how America defined itself after World War II. Cars, families, space flight, modernism....the new world order. Pioneering architect Helen Fong helped define that futuristic look.

Helen Fong was born in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1927. One of five children she grew up working in the family’s laundry business. In 1949 she received a degree in city planning from UC Berkeley, moved back to Los Angeles and got her first job working as a secretary for architect Eugene Choy. Two years later, she began working for Armet and Davis, well known for its work in the “Googie” architectural style.

Modern, wild, whimsical—some of Fong’s most famous projects include Pann’s Restaurant, Johnie’s Coffee Shop, and Holiday Bowl, created to catch the eye of America’s fast growing car culture of the 1950s and 60s.

This story was produced by New Angle: Voice of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation with host Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, AIA. Podcast production by Brandi Howell.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Topia. Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters presents PRX. We are the Kitchen Sisters,
0:07.1	Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva. The people who make our fellow radio topia show
0:12.2	everything is alive, the interview show in which all the subjects are inanimate objects
0:17.1	are bringing you something different this year. Right now in the everything is alive feed,
0:22.0	you'll find a brand new special series called The Animals, an interview show in which all the
0:26.8	subjects are animals. You'll get to know a beaver, a jellyfish, a flamingo, and more,
0:33.0	all sharing the trials and tribulations of what it's like to live elsewhere in the food chain.
0:37.9	Like everything is alive, it's funny, informative, and poignant. Here's a sample.
0:43.2	My name is Jerija, and you can see me okay? Okay, good. I'm a jellyfish, so that's why I always
0:50.9	check with people. We're celebrities in the natural world. You know, that's the thing about being
0:55.0	a butterfly that I don't think people understand is the pressure. This is my son Joseph,
0:59.4	and we are kangaroos. Joseph, we should say you are currently still in the pouch. Yeah, I live in
1:06.8	the pouch still. Okay, it's awesome. It's like nature's pocket. Humans have a phrase,
1:12.4	eager beaver. Are you not a slur? I never know if that's a slur. When I look at a peacock, I don't
1:17.9	see the king of birds. I see a woefully inconvenient animal. Imagine you snuggled up in a blanket,
1:24.9	but that blanket was your mother, and it was just love.
1:38.4	Find the animals, and everything is alive, podcast feed now.
1:45.9	Bob's big boy, Norm's restaurant, clock drive ends, we did parents, and we did the
1:51.2	Johnny's denies. That was the big one. We did hundreds and hundreds of denies.
1:56.9	The whole era was so exciting. Space age, that futuristic thing, white neon, blue neon,
2:04.1	red neon, flashes, PA, N, N apostrophe S. Ellen came in and looked at the back wall of pans.
2:12.4	It was monochromatic, and she couldn't stand that. All of a sudden, she decided I'm changing this.
	...

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