Originally, the only retail districts I had planned on visiting while in Southern California were Jerde's CityWalk and The Grove, but one of my instructors at grad school alerted me to Rick Caruso's latest development, Americana at Brand.
Located in Glendale, just north of downtown Los Angeles, Americana at Brand opened this past May to rave reviews. The development continues the Main Street U.S.A. packaged-nostalgia design embodied by The Grove before it.
Unlike The Grove, Americana at Brand does not purport to be inspired by any particular time and place, and as such it has a more genericized-retro sensibility.
Many of the Art Deco architectural flourishes are nearly identical however, such as the Barnes & Noble signage.
It all seems even more detailed than The Grove, though. Notice the delicate, stylized roofline.
Rather than a central avenue at Caruso's first nostalgic outdoor mall, Americana at Brand is a square with a semi-hub-and-spoke radial design.
Like The Grove (and Disneyland), a street trolley car navigates the loop, offering free rides (which are very popular, by the looks of the cue).
In the center of the loop is a green space, with a children's playset, plenty of grass, and a small bandstand offering free entertainment.
This is flanked by a large movie theater, just like at The Grove, on one side.
Some of the vendor buildings around this park nod to Tavern on the Green in Central Park, NYC—as well as to cities like Paris and Vienna.
The water fountains in the park perform a show choreographed to music, and are the brainchild of the ex-disney creatives at WET Design, the same firm that did the water features at the grove, as well as the famous fountains of The Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Large outdoor clocks are everywhere. This contributes to a Victorian "Town Square" feeling (people out in public needed to know the time to catch trains, etc., in an era when pocket watches were expensive).
There is a bizarre industrial tinge as well. The dominant landmark at Americana at Brand is a large, distressed and rusted iron tower, that looks very much like The Eiffel Tower towards the top.
It holds glass elevators that—in a unique feature that had many young children staring in wonderment—operate with their weights and pulleys system on the exterior of the tower, completely exposed. They are, of course, over-designed and embellished beyond their mere functionality, looking quite spectacular.
What's remarkable about Americana at Brand, however, is the philosophy. Blending the retail district model of The Grove with New Urbanism towns such as Disney's Celebration, this outdoor shopping mall is also a sprawling, high-density residential complex.
Apartments, ranging from studios to townhouses to luxury suites, sit above the ground-floor of every facade. Caruso Affiliated, after all, is a real estate development firm. Again, this is theming as lifestyle—not only are these ersatz spaces used for entertainment and amusement, they are now inhabited, permanently.
Complex property issues arise from the format. The streets and buildings are private, to be sure, but as The Los Angeles Times has reported (with regards to the pet policies; dogs must be small enough to carry), the two-acre green space park in the center of the development is, by virtue of zoning, actually public property.
This convoluted relationship is further exacerbated by the design of the complex. Americana at Brand very consciously evokes a concept as old as the first human settlements—"The Commons." Americana is channeling the design history of public spaces to appear to be public property (such as a town square, or downtown), even though it's a private mall. Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne sums this problem up nicely:
[The design of the complex] "makes the distinction between public and private in the final product almost impossible to untangle. At the Americana, the park is public space masquerading as private space that is masquerading as public. Got that?"
I was met head-on with this convoluted state of affairs when, after being on the premises for a couple of minutes, I began snapping the pictures you see here for my research. I was immediately accosted by an (albeit, friendly) rent-a-cop who informed me that all photography, other than personal shots of friends and family, is strictly prohibited. That's right—no pictures of the lovely greens, the fountain, or the fun trolley car. Of course, many folks on flickr have taken them anyways.
After discussing my intent with the polite rent-a-cop, I was informed that I could get a photography permit from the marketing director's office. Fortunately, because I'm only a graduate student conducting research (and not someone shooting for stock photo purposes, etc.), I was able to fill out the lengthy paperwork and get a laminate pass that kept Americana's private security force at bay. I was bothered enough by the incident to write a letter to The Glendale News Press.
Even Disney—the most zealously litigious of all major media corporations—encourages copious photography of every nook and cranny of their theme parks (although they ask that these images not be sold for profit), and generally allows for commercial publishing of these images with permission.
Themerica has taken me all over the world, from Dubai to Walt Disney World, from Paris to Tokyo, from Hong Kong to Macau, from Las Vegas to Southern California—and Americana at Brand is the only place I was told I was not allowed to photograph without prior written permission.
Americana at Brand is troubling for all these reasons, but overall because it represents a recent trend in "public" spaces that are actually private—this is the privatization of the commons. Spaces that are built like a town square (public), but are more like a corporate campus (private); no free speech, no photos, no rights. You can read more about this ongoing debate over Americana policies at, among other places, the Franklin Avenue blog.
I guess it's worth stating, then, that all images in this post are © Caruso Affiliated, and are posted here under fair use for educational purposes.