Cloudy and unlovely photos, I know, sorry, but appropriate for a building whose future is equally murky.

(And the two snoozing bums remind me of George Susich's comment to me about people moving to downtown Phoenix saying, oh oh oh, there might be bums. "Are you kidding me?!" George blurted out -- "when we lived in Chicago, we knew our bums." Right on.)

This Western Savings branch built in 1972, was designed by Al Beadle, the local architect with the clearest straightest claim to a national reputation. This branch would have been the Maryvale Branch. For my money one of the top five notable branch banks in the valley.

This was not well known even among the Beadle experts before Donna Reiner located it. (Go Donna!)

The immediate neighborhood is relatively healthy (51st Avenue has become pretty much a main north-south arterial) but the building has a distinct odor of doom. It's most striking from an overhead shot, a plan just like a Christian cross diagonally pointed to the middle of the nearby intersection. My first view of this Western Savings was this very same Google maps shot. Like other buildings -- the Snowflake Motel springs to mind -- this might be one of those structure that makes the most sense from where people do not ordinarily go, idly hovering overhead.

But you can see what's going on here. It's a modest slumpblock structure huddled under a system of concrete canopies running out in all four directions. The longest canopy, extending to the northwest and away from the intersection, is cover for two drive-through banking lanes. The other three canopies provide square patches of shade for building entrances.

And some minor complications: the four corners of the slumpblock structure are vertical windows, sensibly, to prevent dark unusable interior corners. And, and, the canopy actually floats about a foot above the structure, allowing a course of clerestory windows, kind of a smart move.

The blue awning might be sign of a little sunlight problem. The overhead HVAC inside looks like a later addition maybe the result of sweaty tellers. Maybe.

This one's exciting to me because it's so characteristically Beadle, so square and rational like the Three Fountains and the White Gates house and Mountain Bell. So devotedly square, square, square.

To my eye there's an obvious link here to the Case Study houses in rhythm and spirit. The Case Study Houses were an experiment in housing in postwar Southern California that re-imagined domestic living under a steel frame, allowing expansive free-flowing open spaces and lots of window space, with very square-looking exterior steel massing. Case Study Houses were fast, cheap, and out of control. They raise a couple of major issues absolutely pertinent to Beadle: whether or not square buildings can feel welcomeing and be "humane", and whether or not great design in a consumerist society can be inexpensive. (Among those who flung themselves against the latter paradox are Victor Papanek and Buckminster Fuller. And Al Beadle. A guy could drive himself crazy.)

Rich Fairbourn mainly remembers the big, boldly colored, acrylic paintings by Bob Oliver, the architectural professor at ASU. They're now in a private collection.

Bob Oliver remembers that Al Beadle was good about trying to place Bob's paintings in Al's buildings. Bob had come to Phoenix from Sacramento in 1963 after 10 or 12 years of architectural practice and had been surprised, and pleased, to see Al working in the same style here.

Ned Sawyer had a more extensive memory of the thing. Since it's diagonal to the corner, it was a "nice diagram" because it satisfied the requirements of the drive-through circulation and the public image to the street. Western Savings was convinced their buildings were signs. The plan allowed the mechanical stuff to be properly concealed, and provided two walk-in entrances plus a sort of ceremonial entrance towards the "front door" corner, with lobby seating and that. The building and the concrete canopy are two independent things and one of a number of "mass-void" experiments.

About the resemblance to Case Study Houses -- not so much, at least not from Ned's perspective. There was more an influence from Italian design here, with Italian fiberglas shell furniture inside (that proved not very durable) and those big bold acrylic paintings. Bob Oliver had been Ned's teacher at ASU and introduced Bob to Al Beadle; importantly, Ned said they sold their designs to WS as a total package of building, interior, furnishings, paintings. The contractor was Jack Jackson.

Ned also did his own Western Savings bank branches, two in Tucson and one in Phoenix at PV mall. The only one of those in original shape is on Campbell in North Tucson dating from the early 1970s. Ned had taken a call from some modernist in the last couple of weeks concerned about that one. And Ned rounded up with complements for Al Beadle, his intuitive design sense, and what a good apprenticeship he'd had. Everybody has good things to say about Al.