This week's fractal is called "Flare." Read the blog and you'll see why I chose it.
I’ve loved architecture as long as I can remember, be it quirky, magnificent or just plain weird I’m a fan. I love to study their lines and intricacies and am always happy to tour a building with character: staying in a building with unique charms is a special treat. And I’m especially sad to see one go.
I can trace this peculiar fascination back to one building where I grew up--the Planters Hotel in Brawley California. Growing up in a small town as a kid who didn’t travel much this place was the stuff of childhood dreams and sparked my imagination as a teenager.
The Planters Hotel was completed in 1927 and for a time was the “luxury” destination in the Imperial Valley. But, like many similar places all of the United States, that didn’t last: by the 1960s the local Movers and Shakers had found more “contemporarily” locales in which to gather and the Planters began its long decline into oblivion. When I became aware of the building ate age five or six (1960 or thereabouts) the bloom was definitely off the rose: the Hotel had become little more than a Flop House and the high-end businesses on the ground floor were being replaced by more marginal establishments (or so my inexact memory tells me). The Hotel closed once and for all and the upper floors were abandoned in the early 1970s although the owners never let the exterior get too run down (for which I‘m sure the citizens of Brawley were grateful).
I never got a chance to go inside the building (and I never even saw pictures of what the place looked like) so my imagination was free to roam: I imagined a large lobby, lit by chandeliers (depending on my mood they were either crystal or wrought-iron confections) but the wood paneling was always dark and the carpets were always sculpted and patterned. Of course the furniture was on a large scale and lushly upholstered in deep red velvet or fine-grained dark brown leather. Upstairs I visualized large, light-filled guest rooms with baroque details and touches like glass door knobs and colorful Mexican Tiles and claw-foot tubs in each bathroom.
As a young adult I visualized revitalizing the Planters and turning the hotel space into luxury apartments. It was never a practical or even remotely achievable dream. The cost of retrofitting the building to make it fire and earthquake-safe would have been prohibitive--and then there were issues like providing adequate parking for the residents (not to mention finding tenants with both money and interest in living in a place like this--especially in a small town with cheap real estate available in plenty). Still, every time I’d come back to visit the Valley I’d see the Planters and those dreams would float through my mind however briefly.
But those dreams went up in smoke once and for all around 12:30 AM Wednesday February 26 when an (alleged) arsonist torched the building, destroying several small businesses located on the ground floor. My heart goes out to those who lost everything: I hope whoever is responsible is caught and punished. I’m also saddened by the loss of local landmark like the Planters Hotel (since the Imperial Valley had so few to begin with) and I mourn the idea of another childhood dream going up in smoke. The Planters Hotel that never was and never could be will live in my dreams--and I hope yours . . .
Below is view of the Plenters Hotel taken from the air in the building's better days. I wish I had a larger, more detailed, picture but this is lterally the only one I could find
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