ANALYSIS | ANALYSE HOUSING FOR THE “MAGIC METAL” CITY: THE GENESIS OF A VERNACULAR HOME 1 LUCIE K. MORISSET is a full professor at the >LUCIE K. MORISSET Department of Urban and Tourism Studies of the School of Management of Université du Québec à Montréal and scientific director of the Canada Research Chair on Urban Heritage of this institution. As a historian of architecture he permeability of national and and urbanism, she is especially interested in Tregional borders to ideas in the first th the hermeneutics of the city, as well as the decades of the 20 century has already been the subject of much writing. In the morphogenetic and semiogenetic study of urban area of urban planning and architecture, form; in this context, her work currently focuses it has been envisioned, for example, by on company towns, particularly in Canada, and she following the circulation of journals and is preparing a new book about Arvida. books, including the practical guides and manuals which were proliferating in the years before the First World War; the figure of the “urban planner” and his or her English and American cousins, “town planners” and “city planners,” acquired their nobility while urbaniza- tion and industrialization called out for new city plans in some quarters and for the creation of towns and cities else- where. In this context, the propagation of particularly popular styles, such as those found in Garden Cities by Ebenezer Howard, republished in 1902, and City Beautiful heralded in 1893 during the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, marked the historiography for having been detected on both sides of the Atlantic, their numerous interpretations having often been reduced to a mere set of iden- tifiable imitators. Indeed, whether it is considering the superimposed occupation of formerly demarcated territory, tabula rasa operations, or new towns and cities, the history of urbanism, where industrial- ization in general is associated with that of workers’ habitat in particular, is still in its fledging phase; it is to this epistemo- logical journey, which is almost necessar- ily transnational, as we will see, that this article would like, especially through the use of newly available sources, to offer a modest contribution. FIG. 1. AERIAL VIEW OF DOWNTOWN AND OF THE BADIN SMELTERS C. 1940. | BHM. JSSAC | JSÉAC 39 > No1 > 2014 > 3-33 3 LUCIE K. MORISSET > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE FIG. 2. BUILDING OF A QUADRAPLEX ATTRIBUTED TO BADIN, PIERSON AND GOODRICH, C. 1913. | BHM. FIG. 3. DETAILED PLAN OF BADIN SHOWING WHERE CERTAIN QUADRAPLEXES WOULD BE BUILT IN 1914, PIERSON AND GOODRICH. | BHM. TRANSATLANTIC PROMENADES one year earlier, the only urban plans by were fine for key workers, but too nice for Pierson and Goodrich found up to now many others.”6 We have learned from this We ourselves2 explored the associations seem instead to represent aqueducts adventure that the Aluminum Company and transfers that occurred upstream and and sewers based on surveys from what of America preferred single-family, downstream of the construction, in North would appear to be earlier sites (fig. 3). low-rise dwellings to the quadraplexes. Carolina, of the city of Badin, also called That said, it is worth noting that when Although it is true that four-unit build- Badinville in commemoration of Adrien he penned his renowned Une cité indus- ings are more common in Europe than Badin, then director of the Compagnie des trielle (an industrial city), an exceptional America, we will show that the Aluminum produits chimiques d’Alais et de Camargue study of an aluminum town5 published Company of America experimented with and president of the l’Aluminium français3 in 1917, the famous Lyon architect Tony these types of quadraplexes and other cartel (fig. 1). The industrialist was also Garnier could not ignore the noteworthy semi-detached homes in several places mayor, from 1904 to 1917, of Salindres, American company that was a subsidiary besides Badin. a municipality in the Gard referred to of the French aluminum industry. Several as the “cradle of aluminum” for having of the architectural proposals put forward In a previous edition of Architecture welcomed the first Pechiney smelter. In in this study ended up being adopted in Canada, we examined the eventual 1913, Badin received, from engineers Garnier’s native city under the patronage migration of Garnier’s industrial city from New York, Pierson and Goodrich, of mayor Édouard Herriot. In Badin, still from France to Arvida via Badin. Arvida the plans for housing meant to accom- proudly called the “town with a French is a company town that was designed modate workers of the aluminum character” by its residents, we have iden- to host a population similar to Garnier’s plant that he intended to establish on tified a number of characteristics that are city, although it was built a decade later American soil, in what was then declared not normally seen in America, but are and several hundred kilometres away. We as “the most significant industrial initia- very similar to those described by Tony concluded that it was worth examining tive in the southern U.S.” (fig. 2). We do Garnier (figs. 4, 5, 6). With regards to these linkages in more detail, as the close not know exactly which part of Badin the dwellings, notably the quadraplexes relationships that existed between many was completed before November 1915, that are credited locally for giving Badin of the players in the world of industry at when the French industrialist offered its French character, we know that the the time provided grounds to believe that Arthur Vining Davis, president of the Southern Aluminum Company, a subsidi- similar transactions affected a significant Aluminum Company of America, whom ary of L’Aluminium français, considered number of company towns (figs. 8, 9). In he had already met in Europe on a few the possibility at the end of 1914 of down- this article, we therefore plan on examin- occasions,4 the possibility of gaining con- grading the models proposed by Pierson ing the town of Arvida once again, with trol of the North Carolina facility; dated and Goodrich, as “the houses for whites a particular focus on its habitat. Doing so 4 JSSAC | JSÉAC 39 > No 1 > 2014 LUCIE K. MORISSET > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE FIG. 4. GENERAL VIEW OF THE BADIN SITE CONSERVED IN L’ALUMINIUM FRANÇAIS ARCHIVES. | IHA. FIG. 5. PRINTING PLATE OF UNE CITÉ INDUSTRIELLE REPRESENTING THE DAM. FIG. 6. A FOUR-UNIT DWELLING OF BADIN; NOTE THE UNBOUNDED LOT. | LUCIE K. MORISSET. will allow us to broaden this perspective landscape of the era and does not fit the movements of its protagonists than and better understand the relationship snugly within the methodological model on their eventual urbanistic offshoot. At amongst the ideas that underpinned the used to study classical art history, which the very least, this is the argument that creation and completion of the planned revolves around masterpieces and brilliant we would like to put forward in our study industrial cities built during the first dec- artists. The history of urbanism to which of a series of aluminum towns built in ades of the 20th century. In fact, Une cité our study belongs is based on a more part or in whole to house the workers industrielle seems to reveal various his- composite logic used in large part in the of this “magic metal of the 20th century,” toriographical shortcomings. This mile- realm of project management. Much as a as it was called in the 1950s. It could be stone work, which ushered in the modern street grid or a housing landscape is more that this “magic,” as well as its corollary era in French architecture with its vision than just a passive response to functional “white coal,” to use the expression popu- of an integrated metallurgical city pow- needs for segregation, housing or com- larized in Lyon by Aristide Bergès, pre- ered by hydroelectricity, was perceived as merce, a company town is an industrial disposed people to thoughts of utopia. eccentric and studied exclusively for its and (often) social project reflecting eco- Tony Garnier was certainly not the only architectural aesthetics and tectonics. This nomic circumstances that have arisen over one who dreamed of such a utopia, as is probably due to the fact that the work the long time and that depend more on evidenced by Henry Ford’s automobile- stood out as an exception in the French the geography defined the company and centric project. Ford was indeed given JSSAC | JSÉAC 39 > No 1 > 2014 5 LUCIE K. MORISSET > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE FIG. 8. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ALCAN, IN 1953. | ALUMINIUM PANORAMA. FIG. 7. DEPICTED IN 1953, ALCAN'S ALUMINUM NETWORK, UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM OF ARVIDA. | ALUMINIUM PANORAMA. FIG. 9. PLAN OF ARVIDA BY HJALMAR EJNAR SKOUGOR AND HARRY BEARDSLEE BRAINERD. | VS. credit for being one of the sources behind 250 kilometres north of the provin- Swedish surname in the first decades of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, a cial capital (fig. 9) and, as a chronicle the 20th century, was also the surname seventy-five-mile-long city that he pro- at the time noted, “450 miles North of of a number of immigrants who flocked posed to create in Alabama and where he Boston.” We shall address the importance to America around World War I, and this claimed that the use of hydroelectricity of this situation later on. Arvida’s urban evokes the international movements in metallurgical exploitation would offer plan was in fact published in a sumptu- which are the context of our story. It “an opportunity to eliminate war from ous manual in 1938, City Planning and is, however, the Canadian city that has the world.”7 Housing: A Graphic Review of Civic Art, echoed the name to this day; internation- no doubt thanks to material collected by ally known for having the most powerful MAGIC CITY PLANNING the German Werner Hegemann during hydroelectric plants and the largest alum- FOR A MAGIC INDUSTRY his stay in the United States.