A Closer Look : Cooper-Hewitt Exhibit A.C.

At logic city. Then a vision of grand hotels the marble the train more the Dennis that fading vision has been altered by the onset of casino gambling. A plenum was raised in 1079 to pave way for Ballys Park Place casino in Belize doesn't stand alone resorts. Caesars boardwalk Regency and the Brighton hotel casinos are already completed. There are about a half dozen other casinos being built and another half dozen in the planning stage. But in the haste to make Atlantic City the Las Vegas of the East much of the charm and character of those grand hotels has been destroyed. Steve Eisen or the Philadelphia architectural firm venturi Roush and Scott Brown who oversaw the project cringes at the side of Bally starkly modern Park Place casino as an opportunity to create a beautiful fantasy has been missed that the design of the building looks like something that could be an center or downtown Manhattan or just about any place Center City

USA. Great granite kind of anonymous building. And that really denies all the originals that's possible and certainly was achieved in the past. I said or his idea of a casino hotel reminiscent of the past is the design proposal for the Ritz. He says it has the feel and flair of the older hotels and says it's like an adult Disneyland. That's certainly that and I think the thing that Disney learned and certainly a lot of the architects and and developers and city is that people like to try on different eras different costumes and much as you change your clothes. And indeed a lot of the Cooper-Hewitt exhibit is devoted to that constant change that constant turnover of images and opportunities that were available to everyone. The exhibit represents three months research by graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania funded by the university and the New Jersey Office of Historic Preservation the exhibit is a montage of photographs graphic

and analytical material tracing the resort's evolution. Paul Muller a former graduate student now working at the Philadelphia architectural firm did the research for one of the display panels called Evolution of a tourist attraction. Miller says he attempted to show how Atlantic City's visitor was created. He evolved and eventually died. He's concerned about the deterioration of all the old images every year. They were trying tractions and were actually in the ocean at the boardwalk you want to go to the ocean but the. Impact and the attraction of it is so great I think it'll probably be overwhelming in Miss America Piers with dance bands and diving horses billboards offering everything from Coppertone to scotch whiskey fudge and salt water taffy athletic city had them all its people but it never was Newport Newport always attracted a certain aristocratic crowd.

He was transferred to a weekend excursion for a new generation of sharks. People who are afraid for the first time for that sort of recreation for a small price you can hire a service man and the only people on the boardwalk was first constructed in 1880 to keep sand from the beach out of the hotels. The base of the present boardwalk was erected some 18 years later. By then it had already become a major attraction. Eisenhower and Muller want to preserve the boardwalk if nothing else. They're concerned as designers is to salvage this last link between the past and what's happening now. The. Boardwalk rather than being this really interesting place to be a place to be seen and to see other things is becoming more and more just the place to get from A to B to get from this casino that casino. And afraid that this is a real loss. Have the casinos whether in design or in policy turn their back on the boardwalk. Are they internalizing and ignoring what the boardwalk might do for them.

Yeah I'm afraid they are. You think they want to really respond to anyone since they do they try to push their casino right out there is because they can. But the difficulty with that is by their very nature a kind of black boxes. That you do and that's partly controlled by the state that doesn't want people to see casinos in the way that you see them in Las Vegas. But you but I can see no hotels a prime example of what I said or means it was constructed with a few windows on the boardwalk saw room sizes are specified by the Casino Control Commission as is the size of the gambling area but I snored Muller say their study raises important questions challenging the commission specifications. But I think I would emphasize the most about second level activities on the board. In the old hotels they used to have the sole Ariens stacks and rooms like that restaurants hotels and the new casinos. So far I'm taking advantage of that going. Back to. The point being that everybody has a right to.

In their vacation time if not all year to play out certain fantasies and have a good time and if architecture is part and parcel of that time. Then they architects go with that. No one sure where this exhibit will go once it stay here the Cooper-Hewitt is over on October 19th. Now Steve Eisen I would like to take the exhibit home so to speak. Find some space for all this somewhere in Atlantic City. But he hasn't found that space yet and I would also like casino developers Casino Control commissioners or even state legislators to take a look at the exhibit hoping they'll take to heart Atlantic City's past as the queen of American resorts and not let an entire realm fade away in New York City. Don Torrance.