Ark of the Lost Angels

TWA Flight Center, John F. Kennedy, New York, New York _{(Credit: Jeff Boyd)}

The Cold War’s architectural competition was seen at home in both the USA and USSR.

The architectural battle of the Cold War took place all over the world. Berlin was the ideal showcase for the best of East vs. West because both sides were close enough to see. However, the ideological conflict resonated in the two superpowers staring each other down: the Soviet Union, and the United States of America.

Inspired by different needs, in different eras, with different influences, the United States and the Soviet Union took different routes in designing their buildings at home to show each other up. 

Back in the USSR

Much like the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the most iconic architectural image of the Cold War in the Soviet Union existed long before the USSR came into existence. The capital of the Russian Empire was Saint Petersburg, very close to the Finnish border. During the Russian Civil War, the government moved the capital further inland to Moscow. At the center of the city lays Red Square and the Kremlin.

The Kremlin Palace is the official residence and offices of the President of Russia today, and it inherited that position from the Soviet Union era. The Soviet Union had an odd history of leadership, in that the leader of the nation wasn’t always the official head of state. Regardless of title, however, the big boss worked out of the Kremlin, to the point where the complex’s name became shorthand for the Soviet, and later Russian, government much like the White House is shorthand for America’s.

The Kremlin Palace is an opulent holdover from the days of the Tsars, and the red walls of the Kremlin are an imposing backdrop to the photos of Red Square that signified the heart of the communist regime. Many Americans will recognize it from footage of military parades on the evening news to underscore Cold War tensions, or as the establishing shot in every movie with a scene that takes place in Moscow since Hollywood was allowed to start filming stock footage there. The other famous feature of Red Square are the iconic, colorful domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral.

The big addition to Red Square made during Moscow’s time under the red banner was Lenin’s Mausoleum. Initially built as a way for Soviet citizens to pay homage to the founder of their glorious state, the preservation of Lenin’s body in such a public manner was part of the cult of personality build around the USSR’s founder designed to give the people something to worship due to the Soviet Union’s dislike of religion. Lenin’s tomb still exists today, with his preserved body intact. In fact, preserving the corpse of the longer dead founder of a long dead regime may seem odd, but the scientists still involved look at it as a challenge. The techniques pioneered to preserve Lenin’s body have even led to medical breakthroughs.

No mention of the architecture within the Soviet Union could be made without talking about the Moscow Metro. Joseph Stalin envisioned a metro system that would not only be fast and efficient in moving Soviet citizens across the city, but also one that would speak to the triumph of communism. As a result, the stations were built to be beautiful. The first two lines were opened before World War II, but Stalin continued the same school of design for stations built after the war. In fact, Stalin was a believer in creating beauty to demonstrate communism’s superiority. Many buildings in Moscow ordered under his tenure became neoclassical masterpieces, like the Seven Sisters. This was put to an end after his death when Nikita Khruschev came to power in 1954 and launched a period of De-Stalinization to deconstruct the cult of personality Stalin had built around himself and curb the excesses of the Stalin era.

As a result of Khruschev’s opposition to the excesses of Stalin’s era, the next era of Soviet architecture had a focus more utilitarian than aesthetic. The brutal fighting of World War II laid waste to much of Eastern Europe. In the decades following Nazi Germany’s surrender, the USSR needed to house its citizens. They built cheap apartment buildings out of concrete all over the place to ensure everyone had a place to call home. This practice would spread to the rest of the Eastern Bloc due to its similarly war torn status. Many of the Eastern Bloc apartment buildings are not holding up supremely well sixty years later, but they remain standing. At the time of their construction, they served the valuable purpose of creating housing for the people. Now, they’re showing their age, and becoming more difficult to maintain thanks to decades of neglect, long outlasting their intended purpose. The legacy of these concrete apartment buildings is an economic one: they were built with what the Eastern Bloc had on hand, and the decline of communism starting in the late 1970s meant there wasn’t enough money to build better housing. This problem was only amplified when the Soviet Union collapsed completely and left many new nations destitute, including the center of the former Soviet empire itself: Russia. Decades later, as many of the former Eastern Bloc nations grew their economies and sought closer ties with Western Europe and the European Union, some of these apartment buildings are getting new leases on life. They are representative of the growth, renewal, and reconciliation of these nations’ communist pasts with their capitalist futures, with an eye towards energy efficiency and green living. 

One of the more interesting buildings left forgotten to time until recent years is the Linnahall in Tallinn, Estonia. Built as part of a complex for the sailing events of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the Linnahall (originally the Vladimir I. Lenin Palace of Culture and Sport) was supposed to be a cultural center, complete with a 4200 seat auditorium. It fell into mild disrepair not too long after the Olympics left town, and sat by the sea, withering for decades. The skating rink was closed in 2009, and the concert hall was closed in 2010. With a newfound iconic status thanks to its appearance in the first scene of Christopher Nolan’s 2020 film Tenet, where it stood in for a Kyiv opera house, people are now paying attention to the Linnahall. The building, thanks to its hasty and cheap construction, has been falling into disrepair for many years. There is a growing movement to repair and preserve this performance center left to the mercy of time and the elements.

Part of the reason why communist architecture is so remarkable is because Europe had functioned as a capitalistic society for many years leading up to the Cold War. Even before the overthrow of kings and emperors across Europe, the free market dictated what people spent money on, and who could afford what kind of house. There hadn’t been a society in Europe that had the stated purpose of taking care of all of its citizens, ensuring they had houses and jobs. The egalitarian aspects of communism fell very short of their intended goals, but there was an attempt for the state to fulfill its responsibilities to the citizens for their basic needs. Pragmatism for the people became the name of the game, and housing the citizenry was a point of pride for the communist regimes, intending to say, “Look at us, we can house our citizens and take care of them. You have homeless people in front of decadent apartment buildings to hoard wealth.” For venues that were more public facing, such as in the capital city of Moscow, the impressiveness could not be overstated. Moscow was meant to be where visitors to the Soviet Union, especially Western diplomats, could see how incredibly successful communism was.

Living in America

In contrast to the Soviet Union which took decades to get its economy back on its feet after World War II, America was flush with cash after the end of the war, and the nation was only too eager to spend it. During the first several years after the war, America led the world in manufacturing because its factories had remained untouched by the bombing campaigns and brutal street fighting which had shattered most of Europe and Asia.

The most impactful examples of Cold War architecture in America during the years immediately following the war were basic houses and highways. With the GI Bill in place, many of the men who served in Europe and the Pacific could now afford better education, and the new suburban houses which were cropping up everywhere. The suburbs, areas of larger houses on the outskirts or just outside city limits, cropped up all over the country. They were the American ideal. Rows of identical or similar houses sprawled out, each with a driveway big enough for a car or two. Having a suburban home was the sign you were doing well in life, and for many Americans who had fought in horrific conditions across Europe or the Pacific, this was a welcome reward. The concept of the suburbs predates America, but their introduction to American society were a crucial part in the social upheaval that came in the post-war age.

Cities were decimated by the white flight of hardworking people who could live in these new planned communities outside the city centers. People could easily commute to downtown areas for work with the newly built interstate highway system but were no longer paying city taxes or spending their money in local stores. The construction of the highways divided communities and destroyed historic neighborhoods in many urban centers. The highway system also made it much easier to move around the country, and vacations between states were much easier than before thanks to the interstates.

The Soviet apartment blocks were answered with suburban homes, the message being America was so hardworking that its citizens could afford large houses with yards, and new cars to let them drive to work, and fancy schools for their children to learn. The American man could afford all of this because the nation was flush with so much cash thanks to its remaining intact after the war

America ushered in the atomic age, and with it, new architectural crazes. The United States was the first country to detonate a nuclear weapon, at Alamogordo, New Mexico in July 1945, and remains the only nation to have used nuclear weapons in combat with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the following month. The Atomic Age came with massive cultural ripple effects, and part of that was architecture and style.

Atomic Age architecture was meant to look at the future. Even today, it still does. The Atomic Age school of design was a reaction to the fear of nuclear weapons. This great technological marvel rewrote the world as it was known and burned itself into the collective mind of Americans. By the end of the decade, it grew to encompass the Space Age movement as well, thanks to the shared love of technology and optimism for the future in both movements. The Atomic Age designs relied on bold colors and designs reminiscent of technology from across the spectrum. Space Age architecture took on more curves and lines inspired by rockets while maintaining those underlying principles. The movement began incorporating more of the hope for the future and is exemplified by such buildings as the iconic Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport, or the Space Needle in Seattle. Googie is an offshoot of the Atomic Age design. Googie came about in California, and took the basics of California Architecture and incorporated an even more vibrant color palette, and angular geometric shapes that called to mind the lines of the automobiles of the day. Googie would go onto become a very West Coast American style, though it appeaed elsewhere.

Part of American architecture is to show off what makes America the nation which it is to the rest of the world. What better way than by building embassies all over the world in the latest styles. Diplomatic missions are already meant to be a symbolic reaching out to connect one culture with another, and America saw to it that its own outreach was warm, inviting, and displayed the architectural variety and style of the West. The Soviets built their embassies to be imposing and secure, while American diplomatic buildings were a lot more pleasing, welcoming, and creative. Many of these structures, particularly the US Embassy in New Delhi, India, as showcases of the best mid-century western architecture. Much like the divided Berlin held the showcases for both East and West, American diplomatic missions gave other nations front row seats to the architecture of the Western World and served to show off the architectural variety and creativity practiced in America.

No discussion of American Cold War architecture would be complete without the World Trade Center in New York City. Designed in the early 1960s by Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki, the Twin Towers were conceptualized as a center for commerce and business. One of the cultural selling points of the free world was the interconnected nature of the free world, where an architect born to parents of a nation that was previously America’s enemy could design the most prominent buildings in the New York City skyline. The Twin Towers became new icons of New York, and by extension, America. They stood as a testament to the strength of American ideals, and during the Cold War, that meant the triumph of capitalism. Shown in establishing shots of New York City in movies and television shows which became famous all over the world, the World Trade Center stood for ten years after the end of the Cold War, seemingly as permanent reminders of how the west won the Cold War. Until they were brought down on the first day of the new era.

The Legacy of a Cold Conflict

The Cold War raged in all aspects of American and Soviet societies during the second half of the twentieth century. At home, both nations wanted to build societies which exemplified their social, political, and economic systems. Many of these buildings still stand today in the former Soviet Republics, and across the United States of America. They exist as reminders of the days which the USA and USSR stared each other down with their fingers hovering near the nuclear buttons. They exist now as historical records of the societies which lived through such an era of conflict. They exist as memorials of days gone by, and of the people who lived through those days. At the time, they had no clue that their everyday lives would take place in unknown memorials to the state of the world.