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Review: The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister

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Wayne McAllister was arguably among the most influential architects of 20th century roadside culture. If you're not familiar with McAllister's name, think "Rat Pack" - Sammy Davis Jr., Frank, Dean, and the others - posing by McAllister's iconic 50-foot high Sands Hotel sign - a paramount example of the streamlined modern flair that he brought to the western roadside. Wayne McAllister started innocuously enough in San Diego, drawing up $10 plans sent out with house designs from lumber companies in the 1920s. His reliable work habits and affable manner soon led to hob-knobbing with big shots in the business, gaining him his first big contract: a luxury gaming hotel just across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. After viewing the building site, McAllister, then a teenager, stayed up all night drawing plans; the owners could not have been more pleased. He got the job, and in 1927 McAllister, with his wife Corrine, finished planning the 400-room $10 million Aqua Caliente hotel, which soon became a magnet for wealthy partiers in the late-1920's heart of prohibition. With mission-style adobe-and-brick on the outside and opulent Moorish ornamentation on the inside, McAllister's work here gives few clues about his later modern directions, with one exception: the hotel's main ballroom was replete with metallic ornamentation that McAllister called "Zigzag Moderne" -- using devices his decorator had picked up at a moderne exposition in Paris a few years' earlier. Chris Nichols' book - The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister - conveys the story of McAllister's growth as one of California modern's preeminent practitioners via the accompanying graphics; and this book is indeed a feast of graphic and architectural design.