Downtown Anchorage in 1980

Just wanted to share this impressive aerial photo of Anchorage that was posted on Twitter the other day. The photo, taken from the eastern end of downtown, was purportedly taken in 1980. Visual evidence immediately suggests this must indeed be the case as both the ConocoPhillips and Atwood buildings on 7th Avenue are noticeably missing from the scene (both would be completed later in 1983). The reason why this photo really grabs me is that it finally reveals to me what the site of the present-day Anchorage Museum looked like before the 1986 expansion — arguably the most dramatic expansion in the museum's history. But before I get to that, I want to note some other interesting points about this photo.

A before and after view looking down 5th Avenue.

Through this photo, we get a clearer view of what the site that is today home to the 5th Avenue Mall looked like shortly before the mall's construction and 1987 opening. I already had an idea of what the block looked like then, but it required detective-like work of scanning through numerous ground-level photos, often taken years, if not decades apart, thus resulting in a hard-to-grasp idea of what the block looked like by this time period. We also get a view of the block that is now entirely occupied by the mall's parking garage. We see that only half of the block was lined with buildings, while the southern half had become surface parking by this time period. The businesses on the northern half of the block were mostly made up of bars; that end of the block was on 4th Avenue, after all. 

Photo by Stephen Cysewski. This block no longer exists.

Interestingly, today the block has sort of flipped and it is now on the 5th Avenue side that businesses can be found, as the parking garage is a mixed-use structure housing retail space at the ground level. Unfortunately, however, retail has struggled to take hold below this garage, and most of the retail spaces today lie vacant. I suspect that the garage's location next to C Street does little to help matters. Since becoming a major arterial road, C Street has become the unofficial demarcation point that divides the more prosperous west downtown from the more stagnant east. I know I've alluded to C Street in this manner in previous posts over the years when discussing the boundaries of west downtown Anchorage. 

Overall, I think this block was better off as it was in 1980. I don't like parking garages — nobody really does. I'm sure city leaders were celebrating the demolition of that collection of "seedy" businesses on 4th Avenue at the time. But when compared to what faces 4th Avenue now, those buildings, and the businesses they housed — no matter what kind of judgement and prejudice they may have endured — were far better for the overall streetscape and vitality of the area. I suppose the overall economic trade-off leans in favor of the parking garage as it meant thousands of residents were coming back downtown for modern retail shopping, vastly outweighing what economic benefit those bars were bringing in. But the fact that a trade-off had to be made in the first place speaks to the sad state of affairs in which automobile traffic and the storage of cold steel machines must take priority over established businesses that supported the livelihoods of its owners and employees, all in the name of economic well-being. Ideally, both the mall and the businesses on 4th Avenue would co-exist without the need for a garage, though I suspect some will go further and argue that a truly ideal world would be one in which there is no mall to begin with. After all, shopping malls represent commerce relocating to the suburbs in order to remain near the American upper and middle classes whom had fled city centers in the second half of the 20th century. Urban malls were a remedy to this problem, but with largely mixed results.   

The same stretch of 4th Avenue today.

Finally, I want to get back to what initially intrigued me the most about the aerial photo. I know that the Anchorage Museum in its current incarnation is the fifth generation in a series of changes that go back to the museum's first major upgrade in 1973. But while I was around for the museum's latter two upgrades in 2008 and 2016, I was not witness to the museum's pre-1986 existence. That is to say that while a portion of the original 1968 building (and its 1970s slight extension) survived the sweeping 1986 upgrade and provided me some clues, I largely had no idea as to the original building's relation to the block it once solely occupied. Questions like, "Did it occupy the entire block?", and even, "What direction did the building face?" lingered in my mind whenever I thought about the original museum's footprint. This picture answered all those questions. What immediately surprised me was the fact that there was once surface parking on the property. I realize this should not be particularly shocking — this is Anchorage after all — but when the post-1986 renovation is all you've ever known, it can nonetheless be jarring to see a familiar urban site in a suburban-style layout. 

Naturally, a photo like this is also encouraging because it demonstrates that suburban-style properties can indeed evolve to make maximum use of the land and increase the density of a given area. It reminds me that, for instance, the Office Depot on 5th Avenue and Cordova Street, with its on-site surface parking lot, does have the potential to be replaced with something that contributes meaningfully to downtown. But what's particularly striking is that not only was the Anchorage Museum not afraid to kill off its surface parking lot, but it did not bring back on-site parking even when the opportunity presented itself again decades later. When the neighboring fire station was demolished in the late 1990s to make way for the 2008 museum expansion, the westside of the block, today parkland, could have easily become a parking lot. After all, we live in a suburban nation in which development must cater to drivers, with their demands for convenient parking and drive-through access. But rather than resurrect free on-site parking, visitors to the museum have to find parking in the surrounding city blocks (and often for a fee). A subterranean garage does exist beneath the 1986 portion of the museum, but it isn't large enough to accommodate all visitors, and it's closed during weekdays. It was quite an admirable move on the museum's part to choose good urban form over automotive convenience. 

Aside from the museum, I cannot really think of another large-scale example in Anchorage in which post-war suburban development has given way to a dense, pedestrian-friendly development. The only place that comes to mind is the 188 WNL tower in midtown. Once housing a single-story restaurant with a large parking lot, the site is now home to a 14-story tower that extends out to the sidewalk with room for retail space at street level. In contrast to its car-oriented surroundings, 188 WNL is decades ahead of its time, which was the reason why I dubbed it "Project of the Decade" years ago. With the city running out of developable land and a climate crisis at our hands, formerly car-oriented sites like the Anchorage Museum and 188 WNL represent the way forward for midtown, east downtown, and other commercial hubs in the Anchorage bowl. 

The 1973 extension is the oldest remaining piece left in the museum complex.