RIP Eldon Davis - Mr. Googie

Saw in the LA Times this morning that Eldon Davis of the architectural firm Armet & Davis passed away last Friday at the age of 94. Davis was credited with being the father of Googie architecture (famous for his space age coffee shop designs) and, according to Sven Kirsten's research, his company helped design such noted Tiki temples as the Tahitian Village, the Tropicana Fresno, the Steve Crane Kon Tikis, the Playa Del Rey Polynesian Village apartments and the Kona Kai in Philadelphia.

This is from a post by Big Bro on the Kona Kai:

Here is Eldon Davis at his 90th birthday, with Googie author Alan Hess, at Pann's Coffeshop (around two years ago):

And here are some of the blueprints. All renderings were done by Irving Weisenberg. I do not know of any other Tiki restaurant that had the Tikis drawn up by a designer in such painstaking detail (interestingly, none resembled the logo Tiki in the Hale Tiki drawing):

They don't make-em like that anymore.

DC

Bigbro,

I just read your post about starting this thread, sorry to have jumped the gun. You are the person to do that.

DC

The more the merrier, Eldon deserves it! Funny, I did not see your post until after I uploaded mine (it took a while to find all those images), - we both started it of with the same photo, which I took at the modcom bus tour a couple of years ago. :)

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2011-04-26 09:11 ]