Winter XI. The decline of English butter + Value added

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Winter X. The English potato

It angers me to pass a grocer’s shop, and see in the window a display of foreign butter. This is the kind of thing that makes one gloom over the prospects of England. The deterioration of English butter is one of the worst signs of the moral state of our people. Naturally, this article of food would at once betray a decline in the virtues of its maker... Begin to save your labour, to aim at dishonest profits, to feel disgust or contempt for your work -- and the churn declares every one of these vices. They must be very prevalent, for it is getting to be a rare thing to eat English butter which is even tolerable. What! England dependent for dairy-produce upon France, Denmark, America?...

...London is the antithesis of the domestic ideal; a social reformer would not even glance in that direction, but would turn all his zeal upon small towns and country districts, where blight may perhaps be arrested, and whence, some day, a reconstituted national life may act upon the great centre of corruption... Little girls should be taught cooking and baking more assiduously than they are taught to read... Bread, again; we are getting used to bread of poor quality, and ill-made, but the English loaf at its best -- such as you were once sure of getting in every village -- is the faultless form of the staff of life. Think of the glorious revolution that could be wrought in our troubled England if it could be ordained that no maid, of whatever rank, might become a wife unless she had proved her ability to make and bake a perfect loaf of bread.

Alpha.

It’s interesting that this section may be the most dated in the whole book so far. Of course in the 1950s and 1960s, in the U.S., someone might similarly have proposed that all young men prove they could perfectly grill a steak and burgers on a barbecue before they could become a groom. I’m very fond of good bread, and I’ve even baked a few decent loaves myself, but I think he may be exaggerating bread’s ability to restore England. I also rather suspect that what would be viewed as a perfect loaf (or a perfectly prepared potato for that matter) would have varied, if not from county to county, at least from region to region within England at this time. I am most surprised about the butter crisis he writes about. For one thing, I didn’t know that butter traveled this well at the turn of the century. I would have assumed that butter was mostly produced within a reasonable distance (cart or train distance, not ship distance) of the point where it was consumed. Apparently not. I almost never keep butter at home and rarely use it when I’m out. I will use some if it’s particularly good, but mostly I order my toast dry and avoid the calories. I’m more likely to use olive oil. I suppose in Italy or France there are towns where the aging generation bemoans the relative popularity of either olive oil or butter, depending on their upbringing. If I had to choose a side, I would go with olive oil, but I would also assist the butter Resistance supplying that essential ingredient to German bakeries -- even if I don’t actually partake in such delights from year to year. Just knowing that there are delicious butterkuchen (zuckerkuchen) out there somewhere, makes the world a better place.

Value added.

In the 1950s and 1960s a tremendous amount of wealth was created in the U.S. by the Interstate Highway System. A quick Google search reveals this gem of a quote,

We were not a wealthy Nation when we began improving our highways... but the roads themselves helped us create a new wealth, in business and industry and land values... So it was not our wealth that made our highways possible. Rather, it was our highways that made our wealth possible.

Thomas H. MacDonald

Chief, U.S. Bureau of Public Roads

Source

While the Interstates were the main engine of wealth creation, there were developers who imagined ways to also add value to urban real estate. In Minneapolis and St Paul, and even in Duluth, skyway systems were created, starting in 1962, to link buildings and blocks downtown. The obvious reason for the skyways was to permit people to walk from block to block without exposure to the winter cold and snow. But the other advantage was that it increased the value of the second floor of all these buildings due to the foot traffic in the skyways. Shops and restaurants opening onto a skyway had advantages, at least in the winter, over similar retail establishments facing the freezing sidewalks.

The next step after skyways can best be seen in Peachtree Center in Atlanta from the late 1960s and Embarcadero Center in San Francisco from the early 1970s, both by John C. Portman. Here, multiple square block developments were crafted so as to pull people up off the streets to retail areas on the second and third floors linked, block to block, by pedestrian bridges. Both “Centers” were criticized for damaging the health of the street and sidewalks by emphasizing the interior and above street levels. As sensitive as I am to the health of streets, I’ve never quite understood this objection, as the sidewalk edges of Embarcadero Center, at least, continue to actively engage the street while the increased density of retail options (not to mention the massive commercial spaces in the towers above) pull people toward this “Center.” It is true, however, that many people drive in, park, consume or work within the center, and finally drive away again without ever hitting a sidewalk.

I’m only writing about this now because I had some time to kill today, before seeing a movie at the theater in Embarcadero Center, and walked the length of both the second and third floors. Two things struck me: This place was designed prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act -- you cannot walk from block to block without going up and down steps, I can’t tell if it was done to save money or to add visual interest, but there are a ridiculous number of steps.

Secondly, even in the midst of a booming economy, the third floor is a ghost town of vacant spaces. Most of the big restaurants up there have closed and they have not been replaced. My guess is that this is because it is hard to pull enough foot traffic up three floors, while the landlord still wants rents similar to street level or maybe the second floor. Greed usually plays a part in these things.

Of the four blocks at the core of the Center, only the block where the third floor is anchored by the movie theater looks healthy. Here there are two apparently thriving restaurants (including the one I frequent) feeding on the crowds flowing to and from the theater. This is the way the whole place is supposed to work.

In 1999 Sony open The Metreon entertainment complex near the local convention center. It was flashy and bold and astonishingly ill conceived. It was a single building covering less than half of a (really big) block. There was no commercial tower above (though on some days there was a torrent of convention goers walking past), there was no parking on site (though there is a huge garage across the street, but it serves the whole, very busy, area). Worst of all, The Metreon completely ignored the busy streets and sidewalks around it. There were a few common entrances, but mostly the building addressed the sidewalk with blank walls. Even where there were windows they showed you stores you could not enter directly. Almost all the opening day tenants -- even Sony itself -- have fled. In 2011 the building was mostly shut down and rebuilt to finally address the sidewalk and to create more convivial internal spaces. The second floor is now a Target store -- a destination of sorts. The third floor remains a huge cineplex, the only consistently successful operation, and now the crowds flowing to and from the theater are more effectively funneled past restaurant and retail options. They’ve pretty much given up on the fourth floor which is only used for special events like large banquets and parties and convention related gatherings. The new businesses colonizing the previously sterile exterior edges are still too new for me to know if they will survive, but they seem to be attracting people from the busy sidewalks. At least they have a shot now.

If there’s a moral to this, it’s that you can add value to above street (or even below street) floors, but you have to be smart about it. Put in an Interstate with an exit and the wealth creating deed is done.

Next: Winter XII. Comfort in the roaring dark.