Palm Beach Design and Addison Mizner

The only way travelers can tour Florida without paying homage to Palm Beach is if they're Trappist or Buddhist monks and have given up the American cult-worship of worldly objects. I'm not a monk of any persuasion and have yet to give up my precious material goodies. My guess is you, Gentle Readers, are in the same boat as well. Therefore, we'll take a few moments to explore the sights in this most interesting place and chat about how it got this way. And why it pulls so effectively at our collective heart strings.

What makes Palm Beach so great, anyway? I mean, what's the big deal? Here are a few of the most obvious answers.

• Bathed by cooling Atlantic-Gulf Stream breezes
• Located on a luxurious subtropical barrier island
• Separated from the southeastern Florida mainland by beautiful Lake Worth
• The winter resort capital of the fabulously rich and very famous

Without any argument, as surely as the North and South Poles attract compass needles, the last item on the above list seizes our attention, enticing us “common” folk with its visions of nearly unobtainable material wealth and promises of happy, carefree lives of privilege and status. Make no mistake, I'm talking about Palm Beach itself, not its pale shadow on the mainland, West Palm Beach. As an aside, Henry Flagler built West Palm for his working class minions. People like you and me who've had to ride the grindstone just to keep afloat and stay one small step ahead of the bill collectors. People who wouldn't know a stock dividend from a newspaper coupon for Kraft American singles or Cheerios.

Palm Beach fascinates many of us because of our ever so human desires to live vicariously. That's why that ridiculous Robin Leech (if anyone was more appropriately named I don’t know it) and his loathsome TV series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, was so popular for so long. The hook is that we paint ourselves right into that picture of opulence, of course after we hit the lottery big time or inherited beaucoup bucks when Aunt Minnie died without issue. And there we are, deliriously twirling the dance floors at gala costume balls, mixing with the affluent and media celebrities, living in houses that look exactly like Mar-A-Lago, Casa Nana, or Whitehall. As if we'd fit right in with our neighbors like the Pulitzers, Kennedys, Rockefellers, or The Donalds. Hey, think about it. Those guys pull their trousers up the same way we do, right? One leg at a time. Yeah, right. Almost makes me want to run out and buy another dozen PowerBall tickets before the wife reminds me we need milk for the baby. Gets you thinking that if we could have picked our parents we wouldn't be in this drab, middle-income fix. Really.

If you're not completely comatose you might remember Henry Flagler built his railroad south from St. Augustine to Palm Beach, with every intention of making it the winter resort capital for America’s wealthiest and BEST families. Well, if he could see it today, he'd know he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Although Palm Beach flourished from the get-go, it really jumped off the map of the idle rich after Paris Singer, heir to the fabulous sewing machine fortune, established a winter home on those balmy shores in the early 1900s. In the winter of 1917, Singer brought with him an invalid friend from frozen New York. That particular fellow had recently given three strangers a ride in his motor car and had been robbed and beaten rather badly by the ungrateful thugs, aggravating an old injury from his youth that had threatened his leg with amputation. As a brief and uncharitable aside, Singer was also noted for his roving eye and a well-developed appreciation of beautiful horses and very fast women. He “dated” the internationally famous dancer Isadora Duncan for a decade and sired a child by her without benefit of clerical ministrations, generating a rollicking scandal in those gentler, kinder, and far more publicly moral days.

Those two men, the filthy rich heir and Addison Mizner, his injured Falstaffian friend and New York society architect, memorable for his outrageous sense of humor and down to earth language, changed the way the world regarded Palm Beach and, soon thereafter, Florida itself. The relationship started when Singer asked Mizner to redesign his small vacation home, enlarge it, make it more comfortable, and give it a much more distinctive appearance. Mizner was happy to comply, building the lovely Chinese Villa for Singer, with its vibrant colors, quaint oriental carvings and sweeping pagoda-style rooflines. Singer, apparently quite the independent fellow, exuberantly planted a stuffed, five-foot alligator on the tile roof in his self-described effort “to defy good taste.” Hell, with all that money do you think he gave a rat's ass what his pretentious neighbors thought? Get real.

Prior to 1917, the architecture of Palm Beach was a very mixed bag. By and large visually undistinguished, and often downright ugly, it was a hodge-podge of Cape Cod-styled cottages, shingled bungalows, Swiss Chalets, several Beaux-Arts mansions—including Flagler’s enormous Classic Revival, Whitehall, which then, as now, was in a class by itself— and numerous modest Florida Cracker houses, most of which were located in small subdivisions. When Singer decided to up the ante considerably by demanding that the renovation be distinctive, Mizner readily accommodated his wish. But their relationship really blossomed toward the end of 1917. The restless heir determined to build a rest home, the Touchstone Convalescent Club, for World War I shell-shocked soldiers and sailors—officers and gentlemen only, naturally—and commissioned Mizner to work on a structure that would knock his neighbors' collective socks off. Which it really did as Mizner designed a “Spanish” Renaissance monastery complex with a soaring tower, rambling tile roofs, stuccoed walls, intimate patios and courts, broad terraces, elegant Mediterranean decoration, and tropical landscaping. It was a dream of Iberia transplanted to Florida.

As World War I began winding down in 1918, Singer realized the demand for a restorative hospital for well-to-do officers in far-away Florida might not be a profitable proposition. So he ordered the putative and unoccupied rest home to be converted into the now famous Everglades Club, a private watering hole for his wealthy drinking and carousing buddies. He gave Mizner a free hand in the revised design. The architect responded by taking the striking tower and dazzling tile roofs that were already completed and created an extraordinary complex of buildings, with an open plan that integrated rooms, patios, and terraces in an intimate design never seen before. His was the first practical adaptation of the Mediterranean Revival style that had first been used in Florida in 1885 by John Carrère and Thomas Hastings for Flagler's Ponce de León Hotel and in 1914 in Miami by F. Burrall Hoffman and Paul Chalfin for James Deering's (of International Harvester fame) remarkable Italian Renaissance estate, Villa Vizcaya. Mizner’s genius was to make the style practical and affordable.

Let’s pause for a moment to insert a word or two about the Mediterranean Revival style mentioned above. On a personal note, I simply hate it when writers assume absolutely every reader knows all the precise details of the esoteric crap they're running on and on about. The Mediterranean Revival style represents a period in American architecture in which aesthetic inspiration came not from within but from external, exotic sources. Not from Spain alone but a collage from many countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean Revival turns up in structures in Florida, California, Texas, and states throughout the Southwest, Mexico, and all over colonial Central and South America. The form has been used to great effect by dozens of first-rate architects during the early to mid-20th Century and by countless hacks as well. By nature it is a composite style. Traditional elements of Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance are combined with varying bits and pieces of more time-contemporaneous creativity. Or, what nose-up-in-the-air architects love to call, the vernacular.

A tip of the hat goes to Addison Mizner, the architect single-handedly responsible for the flowering of what he termed the “Spanish style” among the snob-elite at Palm Beach and Boca Raton earlier in the 20th Century. From whence it spread rapidly throughout the State and then the U.S. For all its marked excesses, especially the unrestrained and ever so Conspicuous Consumption aspect, the Mediterranean Revival style was perfectly adaptable to south and central Florida, with its Spanish history and sub-tropical ambiance.

Construction of the Ponce de León Hotel and Villa Vizcaya cost beaucoup bucks and required hundreds of skilled European craftsmen working for years. Something the notoriously tightwad millionaires building vacation houses in Palm Beach that were used less than three months of the year were very reluctant to do. Mizner made those gangs of stone cutters, tile setters, woodworkers, expensive hand craftsmen all, unnecessary. His solution involved the use of indigenous materials and innovative yet simple construction techniques he taught local unskilled laborers. Believe me, the word genius is not used lightly in this context. As an architect, Mizner was no Frank Lloyd Wright. Period. But, to give the devil his due, by creating many interesting, attractive, and even memorable buildings Mizner essentially created Palm Beach and the essence of the south Florida urbanscape so widely admired today.

Mizner's background is one of the most interesting and unusual in the history of American architecture. His family was from pioneer California stock. He grew up as part of the upper-crust elite of San Francisco. His father was a highly placed diplomat, serving as the United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to all of Central America. As a teenager, Addison lived for a year with his family in Guatemala, becoming fluent in Spanish. While there he acquired a lifelong love for Colonial Spanish architecture. Upon returning to San Francisco, Mizner took and failed the entrance exam to the University of California in Berkeley. He then journeyed to Spain, studying rather informally at the University of Salamanca. The striking architecture of Spain, with its many distinctive styles and periods, seems to have impressed him far more than his formal course of studies. After returning home he became a draftsman with a noted San Francisco architect, Willis Polk. Who wisely demanded that his young assistant learn not only drafting but also the entire construction process, including all the major building trades, training that would serve him very well in the future.

After several years toiling behind a drawing board, Mizner left Polk’s employ to dabble in several other fields of endeavor. Near the end of his life he would regale his many friends, social contacts, and clients with a seemingly endless repertoire of stories concerning his fantastic exploits. He worked as an underground miner in Nevada. Traveled to the Alaskan gold fields and barely escaped a gang intent on killing him for his hidden treasure. Worked as an art conservator for Queen Liliuokalani in Hawaii. Was stranded penniless in Hong Kong. Fought a professional boxer for a large purse in Australia, winning the bout and enough money to pay his debts and buy a ticket back to San Francisco. And made fabulous profits by exporting religious artifacts from Guatemala to New York. An activity that promoted looting and grave-robbing. Although those stories were usually highly embellished by Mizner, making his exploits appear more incredible than they already were, they nevertheless were based on actual events in his life.

After returning from his buying trip to Guatemala, at the splendid age of 30, Mizner decided it was time to pick an honorable profession and settle down. Why he selected architecture is anyone's guess. He moved to New York City in 1904 and immediately began capitalizing on his family's social connections, which were considerable. Having learned the value of upper-crust relationships to establish oneself in business, he started at the top, calling on the leading families of New York: the Belmonts, Fishes, and Oelrichs. And soon captivated them with his original wit and high spirits. Addison knew how to party with the right people and, more importantly, how to convert them into clients in formal as well as informal social settings. It wasn't long before he won several small but important commissions from his society friends and also from Stanford White, a noted architect who would soon be murdered by the insanely jealous, Harry Thaw, at Madison Square Garden, no less. Thaw, who was certainly more than a two or three clicks off normal, had become royally incensed when he learned exactly who had taken his wife’s virginity several years before their marriage.

For thirteen productive years, Mizner concentrated on building a solid residential practice in New York. As a result of his society contacts at the highest levels, he met Paris Singer and the two became friends. When Singer returned from Europe in 1917, burnt out from his genuinely demanding war relief efforts and learned that the architect was having difficulty recovering from a savage beating at the hands of three thugs, he generously suggested Mizner accompany him to Palm Beach as his guest for several months' recuperation. The rest, as they say, is history.

The instant success of the Everglades Club changed Mizner's plans to return to his New York practice. Within a few weeks of the Club’s opening Mizner received four architectural commissions from Singer’s wealthy friends for vacation homes. In a flash he was off to the races. Never again would Palm Beach be filled with tired and boring residences designed on the back of envelopes by local general contractors. Over the next decade, Mizner would become America’s leading, busiest, and most successful society architect.

To demonstrate just how influential to Florida’s urban history Mizner really was, I've provided an abbreviated inventory of his well-heeled and socially prominent clients and the names of their resort residences in or around Palm Beach and Boca Raton. Hey, don’t you love the super rich, giving their houses names. Where do you think they got that practice? You wouldn't think they were aping the Brits, would you? Of course not. Either way, the list reads like a WHO's WHO of Eastern elites and includes old and shamelessly new money.

• Paris Singer's Chinese Villa.
• Paris Singer's Everglades Club.
• The Edward Stotesbury's El Mirasol (incidentally the Stotesburys' daughter, Louise, married General Douglas MacArthur at El Mirasol in 1922), which immediately upon being completed became the “standard” by which all other large Palm Beach mansions were judged.
• Charles Munn's Louwana.
• Harold Vanderbilt's El Solana, originally built for Mizner himself, and then greatly enlarged for Vanderbilt.
• Willey Lyon Kingsley's La Bellucia.
• Mrs. Elizabeth Slater's Costa Bella.
• Alfred Kay's villa, Audita.
• O. Frank Woodward's house on Seminole Avenue.
• DeGrimm Renfro's Villa Tranquilla.
• Casa Bendita, the great oceanfront home for the fabulously wealthy John Phipps—the famous architectural historian, George Edgell, termed the house a “monumental work” in which “a perfect Spanish flavor is maintained.”
• Joseph Cudahy's Grace Trail.
• The 32-room Seminole Avenue home of William Gray Warden, whose father founded Atlantic Refinery and joined John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust in 1874; the Warden house survives today in an interesting adaptive re-use as six condo units (Mizner designed this house to half-scale in comparison to the adjacent homes because Mr. Warden wanted a “small house” while his wife wanted one of more massive proportions. After construction was completed both Wardens loved the house, despite its substantial size, occupying the entire oceanfront block between root Trail and Seminole Avenue).
• Barclay and Mary Wanamaker Warburton’s Villa des Cygnes, whose name was later changed to Villa Maria Marrone.
• The Gulfstream Club, which was designed for a group of wealthy financiers, including Paris Singer, William Gray Warden, Edward Stotesbury, Edward Shearson, and John Harris (an apparently true story is that the five financiers were preparing to return to New York City and demanded to see a preliminary design of the Club before they departed. In a little over six hours Mizner drew the draft design that later was built and was judged in the professional journal, Architectural Forum, as the most attractive Spanish-Italian adaptation in the U.S.).
• Casa Leoni, Leonard Thomas’s breathtaking Venetian palazzo on Lake Worth.
• Edward Shearson’s Villa Flora (one of the six great mansions Mizner built in 1923).
• Preston Pope Satterwhite’s Casa Florencia (one of the six great mansions Mizner built in 1923).
• William Wood's The Towers (one of the six great mansions Mizner built in 1923).
• Anthony Drexel Biddle's El Sarimento (one of the six great mansions Mizner built in 1923).
• George Luke Mesker's La Fontana (one of the six great mansions Mizner built in 1923).
• Playa Riente, Mizner's largest house (one of the six great mansions Mizner built in 1923), was built for Joshua Cosden, a wealthy Oklahoma oilman who would go bankrupt in 1926, sell the home, and immediately acquire another fortune only to lose it in the Great Crash of 1929. Mrs. Horace Dodge bought Playa Riente from the Cosdens and had Mizner design a huge addition with a cloister and patio.
• The La Guerida estate for Rodman Wanamaker II.
• Joseph Speidel's Casa Joseto.
• Mizner built another house for himself, Sin Cuidado (Without Worry or Care Free) only to sell it shortly after completion to Edward Small Moore, who immediately had the architect enlarge it as Collado Hueco.
• John Magee's Lagomar.
• Arthur Clafin's elaborate Lake Worth estate.
• National Tea Company founder George Rasmussen's exquisite Casa Nana, Mizner's last large Palm Beach home, is my personal favorite Mizner exterior with its marvelous round stair tower and three-story stairwell that dominates the front of the house. Later the mansion was owned by dime-store widow Mary Woolworth Donahue and even later by Lowell “Bud” Paxson, co-founder of the Home Shopping Network, and his wife, Marla. In 2003, the Paxsons put the mansion on the sales block for $38 million, a whopping asking price in any real estate market. Inside the 37,000 square foot oceanfront palace are nine bedrooms, fourteen baths, and a 16th Century marble fireplace that King Henry II of France reportedly had made for his mistress, Diana de Poitiers. Outside, the 3-acre site is complete with heated pool, pool pavilion, and a three-bedroom guesthouse with its own swimming pool. No wonder the asking price was $38 million. Cheap at any price. Right.
• Several renovations for Mrs. William Vanderbilt.
• Nate Springold's La Puertas.
• Daniel Carstairs's villa, designed as a farmhouse of the Ferdinand and Isabella period.
• Concha Marina, another house Mizner built for himself, only to turn around and sell it to George and Isabel Dodge Sloane, who promptly hired Addison to enlarge it.

In truth, the actual number of houses designed by Mizner will never be known. Hard to believe, but no accurate inventory of contracted projects was kept by Mizner's firm. The list we have today omits designs known to have been created by Mizner and also includes names that can not be matched to specific houses. The real bottom line is that no matter how many houses Mizner designed, his influence on vacation residential architecture in Palm Beach, Boca Raton, and along the entire eastern coast of Florida cannot be overstated. He was a master of proportion and produced buildings that were entirely appropriate to the locale and climate, visually stimulating, and highly livable. Would that one-tenth of architects were half so talented.

You shouldn't overlook the marvelous commercial properties Mizner designed in Palm Beach: Via Mizner, Via Parigi, Plaza Building, Florida Embassy Club (now the Society of the Four Arts' Ester B. O'Keeffe Gallery Building on Royal Palm Way).

Obviously Mizner was no slouch at wooing and wining clients. He worked long, hard days and met his clients socially at night at parties and balls that dragged on throughout the night. But that didn't in itself make him successful. He possessed considerable architectural ability and put it to work. A fitting but mute tribute to Mizner's talent is the 100 percent survival rate of his houses in the powerful 1928 hurricane. A storm that destroyed or visited considerable damage on many Palm Beach structures designed by other architects. Like George Merritt in Coral Gables, Mizner knew how to design and deliver quality buildings.

The six great mansions Mizner designed and built in 1923 marked a sea change in Mizner's reputation as he became acknowledged as Palm Beach’s and America’s leading society architect. But even more importantly it signaled a critical directional change in the style of vacation homes in Palm Beach and Florida as a whole. Size, grandeur, and opulence became the watchwords. Owners of smaller properties soon began to remodel/renovate in a grand fashion dictated by the six “great” houses—Edward Shearson's Villa Flora, Preston Pope Satterwhite's Casa Florencia, William Wood's The Towers, Anthony Drexel Biddle's El Sarimento, George Luke Mesker's La Fontana, and, Mizner's largest house, Joshua Cosden's Playa Riente. Before 1923, Mizner was able to win only a few commissions for large mansions. After that critical year, most of his clients wanted residences that were on a more substantial or even a lavish scale.

Addison bit the dust financially in the two-fisted beating of the Florida land bust of 1926 and then the Great Depression, dying of a massive heart attack in 1933. Some of his work lives on today but many of his best buildings have fallen to the wrecking ball: Plaza Riente, El Mirasol, Casa Bendita, The Towers, Casa Florencia, Casa Joseto, La Fontana, and many others. A precious few survive for us to admire today: Via Mizner, the Warden house, the Everglades Club, the Florida Embassy Club, and El Solano, which had served briefly as Mizner’s residence.

I'd like to take a moment to explain why Addison Mizner was so important to Palm Beach, south Florida, and beyond. When the Spanish departed St. Augustine for the last time, they left behind little architectural heritage except the Castillo de San Marcos and a few very humble residential and commercial structures. Although both Carrère and Hastings in St. Augustine and F. Burral Hoffman in Miami turned to Mediterranean Revival designs, they were extremely impractical in terms of cost-effective construction. Mizner was the first architect to pull together all the disparate elements: south Florida’s history, the romantic setting, the climate and the relentless sun, moderating the heat naturally with coastal breezes, and perhaps most importantly, the techniques to build Mediterranean Revival houses relatively quickly and cheaply. Once Mizner had organized those elements into a coherent whole, he found the right client to start the ball rolling with Paris Singer and the Everglades Club. Without hesitation or a backward glance, he grafted onto that architectural style a building tradition that would quickly become indigenous to Florida.

But more than that, Mizner knew what made resort living work for his clients. His houses centered on the loggia, what today we might call the great room. Perhaps he borrowed the concept from the Hawaiian lanai. Perhaps he created it from whole cloth. Whatever its origin, the loggia became the hallmark of his designs. Some houses had one. Others had two, one up, one down. Or on opposite sides of the house. One to be used by guests and the other by the host family. One for breakfast and lunch and the other as an informal family room.

Every Mizner house had a walled patio landscaped with lush tropical plants and shrubs and a partially paved terrace onto which the major rooms of the house opened. Those delightful spaces quickly became outdoor family rooms, particularly at night, when the breezes were strong and cooling. He also loved formal entryways orienting the house to the street. And whatever weaknesses he had as a designer, Mizner built striking staircases that were the centerpieces of his entrance halls and seemed to float upwards without visible support. He also designed the houses to be used by assemblies of people; they worked marvelously for parties large and small, indoor and out.

All those details were conscious efforts on Mizner's part. He never designed a mere replica of a Spanish building even though that was well within his ability. His houses were south Florida adaptations on Mediterranean themes: Spanish, Italian, and Moorish/Moroccan. He turned the old “Spanish style” inside out by using numerous openings in the walls to let the sun and air in and make residents feel as though they were living outdoors. He took great pains to relate the living areas of the house to the patios, gardens, and terraces with equally enticing views from inside out and outside in. In effect, Mizner first changed the way rich people thought about resort living and then changed the way the rest of us felt about how our own houses should relate to the environment. That's why his work is significant beyond the Palm Beach swells for whom he worked so hard.

Incidentally, if any of you Gentle Readers pick up one of the more traditional tourist books about Florida, you might find a number of snide references to Mizner's glaring incompetence as an architect. About his “forgetting” a staircase here, a bedroom there, or even a kitchen. And his inability to do elevations until the structure was completed. Those tales are absolute rubbish, fabricated largely by Mizner himself as he entertained his many friends in private social settings and not a few public watering holes. Whether you appreciate his style or not, Mizner was a serious and accomplished architect. Period.

If you’re uncertain as to where the truth lies in this matter, simply consult the standard reference, Donald Curl's masterful, Mizner's Florida: American Resort Architecture (MIT Press, 1987), for dozens of wonderful photographs and a concise analysis of the man’s well-documented contributions to professional architecture.

Despite numerous critics and possibly jealous competitors, Mizner was far ahead of his time. He practically invented the manufacture of faux objects from what he called, Woodite, an inexpensive substance that realistically simulated much more expensive and authentic antique materials. Woodite was a pulpy, fluid substance made from a mixture Mizner himself devised: wood shavings, sawdust, plaster of Paris, and various fibrous materials. The liquid was poured into molds of the original, allowed to cure, and then treated exactly like wood. Sawed, sanded, painted, or stained. He then established a corporate structure, Mizner Industries, to manufacture various interior and exterior objects for use in the houses he and other architects across the country designed for their upper-crust clientele. Fired clay roof tiles, indoor ceramic floor tiles, wall and ceiling panels, lighting fixtures, “antique” and authentic fine period furniture reproductions, cast stone exterior ornaments, wrought iron, wicker furniture, custom paints. Mizner Industries did all that and much more.

If you tour Palm Beach, I hope you don't miss some of its other architectural marvels. Of special interest is Flagler's elegant Classical/Mediterranean Revival Breakers Hotel Complex. The original wooden structure burned practically to the ground in 1925. After the fire the hotel was rebuilt, this time with fireproof masonry, in only ten months to be ready for the opening of the next season. It's decidedly on the grand scale and is very expensive if you’re tempted to stay there. But, hey, it's only money.

Then there’s Joseph Urban's and Marion Syms Wyeth's collaboration on Mar-A-Lago, the lavish mansion built for Grande Dame Marjorie Meriweather Post of the cereal fortune. Of course you can't forget Flagler’s magnificent estate, Whitehall, now a private museum. Or the yellow Paramount Theater Building, with its green awnings and memorable entryway on North County Road, also designed by Joseph Urban, a successful theatrical set designer as well as an architect. My list includes the U.S. Post Office on North County Road; Bethesda-By-the-Sea Episcopal Church at 141 South County Road; the Norton Museum of Art in the 1400 block of South Olive Avenue; and the Vineta Hotel on Coconut Row.

And you don't dare overlook the marvelous Everglades Club or El Solano, Mizner's residence at 721 South County Road. My advice, after you've driven along Worth Avenue, gawking like all the other tourists at the internationally famous shopping district, park your car and stroll around Via Mizner, a charming commercial and residential complex of multi-story structures that has been restored. Mizner lived in an apartment there from 1925 until his death from a heart attack in 1933. Some think his ghost still roams through the quiet walkways and covered arcades. Whether the high-spirited and never-say-die architect is there or not, Via Mizner is a special treat in a special urban place.

On a personal note, I must admit to being uncomfortable in Palm Beach. It's too much a celebration of Conspicuous Consumption and rampant thoughtless materialism for my taste, both as an urban planner and as an individual. However, it's a city that I enjoy visiting, at least in terms of architectural eye-candy. And I appreciate its many contributions to the field of urban design. By the way, if you're interested in visiting Palm Beach and in getting an outsiders view of how the truly rich live, my advice is to travel in the summer when hotel rates are more affordable. And when many of those incredible stores on Worth Avenue are running sales (that input was from my lovely wife, who prowled the avenues and vias of Palm Beach like a shark searching for a victim).

If you want to sample the really high life, The Breakers is opulent, old money Florida that can't be beaten. Too rich for my blood but truly elegant, with perhaps the best spa in the U.S. But bring a credit card that has lots of room on it or bags of cash. My personal taste runs more to the nearby and luxurious Four Seasons Resort. But the Ritz-Carlton, located on South Ocean Boulevard in Manalapan, holds a special place in my heart. Where my wife and I almost became accustomed to the pampering and free booze on their justly famous Club Level. It was a most enjoyable experience, for the week we could afford. Just remember, tipping is a way of life in those places. Get used to it. Hey, it was our anniversary. We were entitled.

Celebration: A Lesson in Faux Authenticity

In truth, I struggled with the subtitle of this section, torn between the one used above and “Celebration: A Modern Company Town.” I rejected the later because the one used is a far more accurate description of the reality of Celebration. Those who claim to be in the know may see Celebration as a gift to the brave New Urbanism world from our good and trusted friend, Walt Disney. But a more critical view is that Celebration is a failed experiment that creates an artificial, dangerous, and inauthentic mutation of an idea with merit, neo-traditional communities. For the record, as you have already seen from the title above, my opinion falls decidedly on the side of the more jaundiced observers.

The Disney people, under the guise of The Celebration Company (TCC), tore a page from their theme park book and tried to convince the world that as imagineers and marketeers they could do urban development better. Maybe not cheaper but certainly better. Disney has pushed and shoved Celebration down its alimentary canal as a demonstration that town planning and development can be enlightened. Wow! Now there’s an earth shattering surprise. I can see the cheerleaders exhorting the crowd. Can Disney save an America that now flounders lost and lonely in sterile suburbia? Yes, the crowd screams in Mouseketeer ecstasy. Can Disney create a genuine sense of community that is the antithesis of the lifeless and dangerous suburbs? Yes, Yes, YES! the crowd wildly screams their Mouseketeer orgasms. Right. All you have to do is visit Celebration and buy a house that is anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent above the surrounding area’s market rate and see for yourself.

Okay, it should be obvious where my head is. I'm not now nor ever have been an enthusiastic fan of Disney's sanitized, plasticized, and historical revisionist worldview or of Celebration. I’m not into escapism, unless I'm on the beach staring at a beautiful young thing wearing not much more than an enigmatic smile. There it is, my personal predilection. But, because Disney chose to disguise Celebration as a New Urbanist community with the help of many willing and well-known architects and planners, including Robert A.M. Stern Architects and Cooper, Robertson & Partners, I’d like to provide a close look, despite my underwhelming response. And thereby give everyone a chance to make up her own mind. After all, Disney is a mighty pop-cultural force to be reckoned with. So, first we'll look at the physical reality of Celebration and then we'll critically examine the Disney rationale that created and sustains it.

Without question, Celebration is Disney's attempt to create a community based on the principles of New Urbanism. Celebration pushes that envelope hard. It is a totally planned community built from the ground up to Disney’s exacting standards. Okay, a good place to start our examination is with the official Disney Company line. “We looked at what made communities great in our past, added what we've learned from the best practices today, and combined that with a vision and hope for strong communities in the future,” said Michael Eisner, then Disney’s reigning monomaniacal chair and CEO. “We believe the result will be a very special community.” Special indeed. Again, no disagreement.

For the record, the 4,900-acre Celebration property is located in Osceola County, south of US 192, with its northwest side bordered by Interstate 4. It's 30 short minutes from downtown Orlando and only 20 minutes plus or minus from the Orlando International Airport, depending on time of day and traffic. So it's easy to find even if you’re location-challenged and the thought of reading a map makes your stomach roll over. But just the act of driving into Celebration is either a wake-up call or a rude slap in the face. Route 192, the major thoroughfare from which Celebration Avenue branches, is a celebration in itself of the typically mind-less and taste-less tourist trap development for which the State is justly famous. The area, with its miles of multiple traffic lanes choked with vehicles from throughout the United States filled with screaming, narcissistic brats and hyper-ventilating, self-absorbed parents, panders to the lowest possible taste.

The roadside’s edge is choked with the ubiquitous peach and turquoise stuccoed, red tile-roofed motels and retail strip centers. Even more insipid are the themed restaurants, some even shaped like giant oranges, which have proliferated in much of the hinterland surrounding the Magic Kingdom like the parasites they are. Their sole purpose in life is to siphon off some small measure of the disposable income scattered about by dazed and bewildered visitors too impecunious to stay at the real thing: Disney World. Seeing that nauseating crudscape certainly makes Walt's motivations for extending the boundaries of his kingdom as far out from the center of Disney World as possible understandable.

As an aside, the Reedy Creek Improvement District is Disney Corporation’s governing arm that oversees about 35 square miles in Orlando. In 1967, the State allowed Disney to set up Reedy Creek as its own private government that could regulate land use, provide firefighting services, build roads, and license alcohol sales; in other words, a government in and of itself that does not have to comply with State zoning and land use laws and is not responsive to voters.

           

The transition from urban chaos to the peaceful enclave of Celebration is completed in the blink of an eye. It’s almost like being beamed aboard the Starship Enterprise. Immediately after turning off of Route 192, you find yourself on a wide, grassy boulevard, lined with trees and a white split-rail fence (plastic). The message is clear: you’ve reached a safe haven. Home, sweet home. You can take a deep breath and finally let yourself relax. An old-fashioned water tower, emblazoned with both Celebration’s name and, of course, an advertisement for the AMC cinema, is the first thing that you see. Followed by a sign in pseudo-childlike handwriting that cautions drivers to be aware of children at play. Cute touch. Nauseating but cute. Then you're treated to a collection of architectural eye candy totally disassociated from the work of the less than creative hacks who are responsible for the visual dreck on Route 192.

           
The 109-acre Celebration Place office park is a cluster of very engaging office buildings designed by a highly skilled architect, the internationally famous Aldo Rossi. Unfortunately, no one seems to have clued Mr. Rossi in to the fact that his design was supposed to have a New Urbanism focus because his office park is nicely designed but fairly standard single-use fare. The office park has an ambitious but probably do-able proposed build-out of one million square feet. Which is a sizable chunk of office space for what is greenfield, suburban central Florida that was not too long ago a wetland. To your right as you drive in is the spacious Celebration Health Campus—designed by none other than Robert A.M. Stern—which is owned and operated by the enormous Florida Hospital system and offers comprehensive healthcare, advanced diagnostics, and a fitness/wellness center. The whole enchilada has about 284,000 square feet.

           
Water Tower Place, an 18.5-acre commercial shopping center, was built in 2004 and is located at the entrance of Celebration on U.S. 192. The development was anchored by Gooding’s Supermarket but that location closed in 2005. The center has 72 percent occupancy and has struggled ever since opening. In April 2010 General Electric was awarded a final judgment of foreclosure and took title to the property. Other tenants when I was last there included Barber & Beauty Emporium, Carpet One, Celebration Florist, Chick-Fil-A, Cold Stone Creamery, Joe's Crab Shack, Planet Smoothie, Quiznos Subs, The UPS Store, and AmSouth Bank. But no mixed use of any sort. Although well designed, it’s just another strip center.

           

Once more, to me and to any urban planner/designer worth her salt, no New Urbanism concepts whatsoever were expressed in the design of the business campus, the health center, or Water Tower Place, especially since those commercial functions are located nowhere near the Town Center, thus losing all that potential opportunity for socioeconomic interaction. So, despite Michael Eisner's comments, Celebration gets off to a dyslexic start. Because, starting at the main access road, it simply doesn't read right as a New Urbanist community.

The initial impression a first-time Celebration visitor has is a typical Disney World experience: the overwhelming sense of cleanliness and order bordering, in my mind, on sterility. Everything has its place and is in it, like its sister Disney creations, the theme parks, Celebration is nothing but spotless. Not only are overgrown lawns or litter on the sidewalks or in the gutters absent, but even the trash and recycling containers have been hidden in service alleys that run behind individual houses. Hopefully for utility’s sake but also so that they cannot be seen from the road. Remember, for many unthinking and unquestioning people, appearance is reality. Indeed.

As is indicated above, much of the non-residential architecture in Celebration is nothing short of fantastic. Some of the biggest, glitziest names in architecture have designed the structures, ranging from marvelous to merely interesting, in the Town Center and along the periphery of the development. The list reads like a who’s who in modern architecture. Michael Graves (Post Office). Philip Johnson (Town Hall). Charles Moore (the church-like Preview Center, the last design before his death). Cesar Pelli (Celebration AMC Theater). Venturi, Scott Brown (Celebration Bank). Robert Stern (Celebration Health). Graham Gund (Celebration Hotel). And Aldo Rossi (Celebration Place) among others.

Hey, Disney's big fees attract the big name designers. Most of their designs are terrific, no doubt whatsoever. But don’t confuse the sauce for the entree. Communities are not a product of place but of the entire warp and woof woven through complex human interactions. A lesson that TCC seems not to have learned. Great structures and fine looking plans for commercial centers do not necessarily result in functioning communities, regardless of what various unnamed marketeers would have all the suckers believe. Here’s their bullshit distilled into a nutshell: build good buildings and you will attract good people and have a good community. Social Darwinism rears its ugly head in certain designing minds. Hey, if you don’t think about the implications, that kind of pseudo-logic sort of makes sense. In a very twisted way.

           

Soon after you get accustomed to the often extraordinary architecture found in the Town Center you're hit by the biggest disappointment of Celebration: the essential blandness of its residential neighborhoods. In stark contrast to the many fascinating residences of other New Urbanist communities (Seaside and Windsor), few of the neighborhoods or houses in Celebration exhibit the flair and drama of creative urban planning or architecture. Although many are attractive in a standard suburban way and are obviously expensive, over and above the blandness there is something essentially chilling about Celebration, with everything so neatly lined up and determinedly well coordinated.

           
An artificial, Orwellian completeness pervades the environment that Disney has created. Of course, Disney’s goal was to provide a totality of vision that is meant to seduce visitors and residents alike into believing that what they see is the truth. But the individual residential structures are too alike, too cookie-cutterish to stimulate visual interest or excitement. In reality, Celebration is too much a traditional subdivision to stand out. Where Seaside homes are rich in diversity, Celebration homes are fundamentally boring and demonstrate so little variety as to be flat-out, dead-ass bland. They are expensive but lack that single most important ingredient that makes a neighborhood authentic: the spark of creativity, of spontaneity, of life itself.

And that finally brings me to that preposterous name: Celebration. Exactly what is it that's being celebrated? My guess is it’s not only Disney's vision, an idea offensive in itself, but it's also a self-congratulatory message put in the mouths of the residents.

We made it! We're certified successes. We're not like those poor slobs living in the dreadfully ordinary suburbs, worrying about when your neighbors are going to remove those offensive political signs in their yard or paint their house the wrong color. Yeah, baby, we've arrived!

Unlike Seaside, but like many other New Urbanism communities, some of the residential blocks in Celebration have service alleys in the back, where the garages are located. A design element I strongly favor, personally and professionally. However, by the standards of New Urbanism the yards in Celebration’s single-family neighborhoods range from small (good) to very large (not good), especially for the more expensive houses. Which largely creates a house/lot pattern that renders Celebration’s single-family residential areas indistinguishable from homes in traditional subdivisions. So much for the idea of using close proximity with the hope that neighbors will therefore be encouraged to interact (“Say, bud. You got a spare joint I can mooch?”) and thereby generate intimacy. Not to mention the paucity of mixed-uses, except for very limited areas in and around the Town Center.

But for me personally, the most chilling thing about Celebration is the absence of those institutions that make neighborhoods and towns in genuine urban places the wonderful environments they can be. Permit me to list the important urban institutions Celebration lacks. Courthouse, police station, fire station, public library, a real City Hall, a funeral home, and even a cemetery. Although by 2003 the Community Presbyterian Church was located adjacent to the Town Center, the absence of many other community-forming institutions and land uses is a purposeful rejection of those mechanisms that historically have played such vital roles in the development of authentic urban settlements. But think for a moment. What would our communities be like if they all excluded the physical manifestations of justice, individual learning, democracy, and even death that those structures represent? Where would we be today if our urban history had developed under that scenario? It's a chilling thought.

After you start looking around Celebration with a critical eye, you realize that the Town Center seems strangely out of synch with the rest of the development. Although it features a small food market, an eye care office, cellular telephone shop, movie theatre, upscale tavern (which is NOT a neighborhood bar), and jewelers, it lacks a supermarket, drug store or dry cleaners and, heavens forbid, a neighborhood bar or two and only has a comparative few multi-story apartments or row houses. Most of the businesses seemed positioned to feed on the life-blood of the growing tourist market.

On the four days I was there, the streets were filled largely, though not exclusively, with tourists like me. Well, perhaps not really like me since many were gawking in obvious admiration (what was I thinking?). But you get the point. The shops and expensive restaurants are intermixed with the so-called “municipal” buildings, which consist of the pseudo-Town Hall and the Post Office, as well as the Bank. As mentioned before, the community has no Fire or Police Departments or Public Library, which at the time I found extremely curious. Until a couple days later, after I had time to reflect on what I had seen. And then I wondered: Where is the diversity that makes our best urban neighborhoods so enticing and exciting? The differing racial and religious heritages. Different housing types and densities. Different sexual orientations. Different social milieu. And no affordable housing. Actually, TCC made payments to the State to avoid having to include housing for unsightly and highly undesirable lower income people. What a terrible shock. And where are the always fascinating counter-culture folk? The young people who look and act like they stumbled out of a 1971 time-warp? Where is Celebration’s spice of life? No way. Just ain't there. So quit looking. All you’re gonna get is stolid upper middle-class, upper-income. Whitebeard all the way. What? No diversity?

Recently, Stetson University, a non-sectarian, comprehensive, private university whose main campus is in nearby DeLand, located just north of Orlando, established a center in Celebration. According to information posted on the University’s website, major funding for the Stetson’s Celebration campus “is provided through grants from the State of Florida, Ford and Knight Foundations, and from The Celebration Company.” Wow, there’s a big surprise. That Disney would help bankroll a private university campus adjacent to the Town Center, adding yet another piece to their jig-saw puzzle. See, we are a real community, is what Celebration seems so very desperate to prove.

It should be noted that in 2004 Lexin Capital purchased the Celebration Town Center from Disney and promptly began converting 105 apartments in the Town Center into condominium type ownership and sold the units to individual owners. Andrés Duany, in his essay, “The Celebration Controversies” (INTBAU, Vol. I, No. 8, 2004; found online at: http://www.intbau.org/essay8.htm) finds that sale to Lexin entirely acceptable since “Main Street, like other modern retailing must be centrally managed to remain competitive.” So, according to Duany, that famous Cuban-American urban planner, commercial ventures are more competitive if they are “centrally” managed? Isn't that what Communist states did with their economies? Like Castro’s Cuba? Centrally managed? And we all know how well that worked. What about market-based capitalism founded on competition? Wonder how many free market economists would agree with his fatuous statement?

That’s a good point from which to launch my critical observations about what Celebration pretends so hard to be and what it really is. To put it as bluntly as possible, despite its masquerade as the “Town” of Celebration, Celebration is not a political jurisdiction of any variety and has no municipal government. Therefore, it has no registered municipal voters, no public municipal elections, no elected municipal officials, and no democratic process. Period.

No matter what it pretends, it's merely a tract of privately owned land known as the Celebration Community Development District run by The Celebration Company (TCC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Moreover, to assure itself that Celebration’s residents would never play an unforeseen and uncontrollable role in Disney’s main property, the larger Reedy Creek Improvement District, the land comprising Celebration was severed from Improvement District. That way Celebration homeowners could never claim to be residents of the Improvement District and therefore could never vote. Democracy, after all, is not a laughing matter and should never be left in the hands of people not tightly controlled by Disney’s mouseketeers.

Okay, let’s look at democracy in action at Celebration. Although the commercial properties were owned by TCC and are now owned by Lexin, the residential properties are owned by homeowners who form the Celebration Residential Owner’s Association (CROA), which is governed by a seven-member Board of Directors, five elected to the board by homeowners in the district and two seats elected “at large.” Yes, indeed, that's democracy in action. But wait.

Celebration has two other boards supposedly sharing in governance of Celebration. The Celebration Non-Residential Owner's Association (CNOA), which is governed by a five-member Board of Directors, appointed by TCC. The third board is the Celebration Joint Committee (CJC), which is THE governing body, is comprised of two representatives each from the CROA and CNOA boards and are appointed by TCC.

Not to spoil your illusions but the CJC is legally defined so that TCC has the first, second, third, and final say on all decisions large and small. No matter what the home owners or non-residential owners want until those owners constitute 90 percent of the various properties. End of story. In essence, Celebration wears an intentionally false face on almost every façade, Janus many times over. Illusion and pretence, that's what Disney has always been.

So, why should that be important to anyone? What’s the big deal? Because Celebration is not just an address, not just another neighborhood. For the Disney folk, it's an ideal, an example for the entire world to see, admire, and covet. At this point you should recall the quote from Michael Eisner. It's a type of urban Utopia interpreted and defined by none other than the great philosopher, Walt himself. The Disney Corporation, in its Celebration experiment, has seemingly allowed people to choose to live in the idealized and sanitized past. In a town where everyone is supposed to have the very same set of ideals and goals, sharing a single concept of how life should be lived to the fullest.

But, when you examine it, those are beliefs in which residents have no say, no choice. Their only choice is whether or not to sign the covenants and move to Celebration. After that, the choices are made for them. Remember, there is NO elected representation whatsoever as the general public understands or experiences it. That means NO participatory democracy. Hey, isn't that the America we all know and love? Whoa, big fellow. Something seems badly wrong with that scenario.

By its own definition, Celebration is a town without life's ugly bumps and warts. No loud boisterous neighbors. No junker cars or RVs parked in driveways characterized by broken concrete or patched asphalt. No houses with faded paint that’s chipping away. No financially strapped people living in just barely standard housing. No residents complaining publicly about the voracious mosquitoes. No kids who terrorize neighbors and vandalize property in the middle of the night. No barking dogs that wake you up at 4:30 AM. Right. And what's wrong with that, you ask?

What I want you to do, dear Readers, is think about the community in which you now live or the one in which you grew up. About what’s right and what’s wrong with it. The warts and the halos. Disney has attempted to alter your experiences of the realities of urban/suburban life by creating what he thinks is the most appropriate environment. Then Disney insists that all his residents acquire the most appropriate attitudes and the correct commodities as he defines them. Examine those ideas carefully and you will find that a twisted sort of environmental determinism is hard at work. Live in a perfect community and you too will become perfect. Or else. Now that’s starting to sound way too much like fascism for me.

The Disney folk would love you to believe that Celebration is an ideal community in the small town mode that was inspired by exciting places like Savannah and Charleston, Easthampton, and Nantucket. But what we can't forget is that each of those cities developed historically, over a period of two hundred or more years, as independent, democratic, self-created, and self-directed communities run by the residents themselves. Not a planned one regulated by a Board of Directors largely appointed by The Celebration Company. Hey, if Disney’s experiment in creating an ideal community had been tried in those cities by the British back in the 1700s, the American settlers would have revolted in outrage, tarred and feathered every one of the bastards responsible and ran them out of town. Think I'm kidding? If you do, read a little Tom Paine and get in touch with your not-so-bloodless democratic roots.

Finally, Celebration's designers and residents have not presented themselves and their pseudo-town as just another place to live. They have actively proclaimed its specialness, its outstanding dedication to building a sense of place. A unique community with state of the art healthcare, technology, and educational facilities. A truly innovative lifestyle. But the amount of control that Disney possesses, which no doubt Celebration’s residents have willfully signed over to them in the form of subdivision/deed restrictions and covenants, is diametrically opposed to the image of small town America that Disney has paid billions of dollars to symbolize in his theme parks. And for a modest piece of which Celebration’s residents have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.


Implications

About the most charitable thing you can say is that Celebration is a pseudo-community whose very foundation is a snake's nest of contradictions. Designed to recreate the image of the worry-free, small town America so beloved by Norman Rockwell and his uncritical admirer, Walt Disney, and the idealism and security associated with the post-war era, it is in actuality a community that is controlled by a strictly enforced set of rules and regulations to which all residents must agree and follow. Or move not move in. Those choices are the only ones available. Go back in time and try that in the Charleston of the 1700s. But you better be well armed and have a couple fast horses.

Although Celebration claims that it has a dedication to the ideal of community that is not found in the modern age, the very institutions and organizations that are the source the life-force of authentic American communities are absent. No representative government means, therefore, no democracy. What the residents have in common are commodities (houses) and a set of restrictions (legally binding covenants) that dictate what type of shrubs can be planted in the yards, how high the fences may be, and even what you can say in public about life in Celebration.

Celebration romanticizes the past by demanding idealized physical forms (expressed in Master Plans and the design of individual structures) that thought-less Americans associate with the best and purest aspects of American life. In Celebration, Disney has attempted to create a utopian community ruled by a single vision. A vision structured through a set of principles to which every resident must subscribe. Then the vision is held up as an example to the rest of us who are on the outside and are supposedly looking in with envy. Right.

Celebration has been conceived as a shining city high on a hill. A fortress, if you will, in which residents can therefore live a more secure, meaningful, and peaceful existence. Yet, Celebration is, at its very core, a false image of a place America never was and never could be. Never, that is, if we really and truly believe in the philosophy of the Enlightenment that gave life to our Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Not if we are dedicated to living freely, determining our own destiny through the messy and oftentimes upsetting process called Democracy.

           
But faux cultural images, like Disney World and Celebration, are dangerous only if we fail to recognize their essential emptiness and blatant hypocrisy. Alexander Wilson, in his always interesting book, The Culture of Nature, quotes the Disney “Imagineer” who wrote the following: “The environments that we create are more utopian, more romanticized, more like the guest imagined they would be. For the most part, negative elements are discreetly eliminated, while positive aspects are in some case embellished to tell the story more clearly.”

Wait just one minute! How’s that again? Can the story be told “more clearly” by embellishing it? Isn't that just another Big Lie? Joseph Goebbels, the master Nazi propagandist, would have felt very comfortable with that idea. Try this little embellishment. Adolph Hitler really didn't believe in genocide. He simply wanted to purify the Aryan Race by removing non-Aryans (largely but not entirely Jews) and defectives—the mentally challenged, homosexuals, and the physically disabled—from the Third Reich's gene pool. Yeah, that works. But only if you're a fascist hate-monger or a damned idiot. When you eliminate negative elements you don't like and add positive elements you do like “to tell the story more clearly,” the result is a LIE. Period.

Romantic conceptions of history are intrinsically false views that can get us in enormous trouble if we forget how essentially wrongheaded and stupid they are. Ultimately, the twin ideals Disney has enshrined in Celebration are the escapism and make-believe that characterize not utopian communities but the nearby Disney World theme park. And those plastic ideals are ones I for one can live without. Real cities can be messy places to live in but at least they have the advantage of being authentic. I'll pass on the sanitized, plasticized, fake version, thank you.

Core-Mantle Boundary and Creationism

Core-Mantle Boundary (CBM)                Irregular interface about 1,800 miles (around 2,890 kilometers) below the Earth’s surface marked by seismic discontinuities that was long believed to be a simple, homogeneous division between solid silicate rock of the mantle and liquid iron alloy of the outer core. Within the past several decades, intensive geophysical and geochemical research has shown the CMB to be considerably more active, complex, and heterogeneous and that it may hold the key to understanding numerous geophysical phenomena, including the formation of mantle plumes, various core-mantle interactions, the behavior of the Earth’s electro-magnetic field, and the ultimate fate of subducting crustal slabs driven into the Earth’s mantle by tectonic forces. Having stated that, it is critical for Readers to realize that the distance from the surface and resulting extreme temperature and pressure conditions in the CMB make data collection and interpretation particularly challenging. The pressures are up to 135 gigapascals and temperatures probably range between 2000° K and 4000° K, conditions that are extraordinarily difficult to reproduce in the laboratory. Despite those enormous challenges, laboratory experiments, seismic wave analysis, computer simulations, and geophysical-geochemical theory are finally working together to bring the CMB into sharper focus.

Several teams of research scientists (Iitaka et al, Oganov and Ono, Murakami et al, Hirose et al, Shieh et al, and Tsuchiya et al)  have recently linked the calculated physical properties of a newly discovered high-pressure crystal structure, called a post-perovskite phase, with seismic observations of the deep lower mantle. Other scientists from the United States and Canada have recently proposed a new layer in the model of Earth’s interior, essentially a sort of fuzzy zone with properties of both the outer core and lower mantle that at least in certain areas may neither be sharp nor homogeneous. That new theory involves a conducting layer at the CMB that could explain both the Earth’s wobble and the newly discovered zones of low seismic velocity in the lower mantle. However, the process of relating seismological observations to the dynamics, chemistry, and evolution of the CMB is just beginning. Therefore, none of the information cited in this blog should be taken as firmly established or universally accepted. That area of research is truly cutting-edge and should be followed carefully in the professional literature to see what shakes out. Author’s Note: The CMB is also widely known as the D’’ (or D prime-prime) layer, which was the name applied in 1949 to the 200-kilometer thick area by the New Zealand geophysicist Keith Bullen, who geoscientists may recognize as co-author of the Jeffreys-Bullen Travel Time Tables.

Additional Background: In 2001, researchers Sebastian Rost and Justin Revenaugh of the University of California — Santa Cruz studied seismic shear waves that had been generated by earthquakes near the islands of Tonga and Fiji in the South Pacific and were recorded by an array of instruments in Australia. They found evidence of a thin core-rigidity zone and small patches of rigid material at the edge of the fluid outer core where the outermost core was more solid than fluid. Their findings indicated that the boundary between the core and the mantle may not be as sharply defined as was once thought. In October 2002, Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at University of California — Berkeley, published “Avalanches at the Core-Mantle Boundary” in Geophysical Research Letters. In that research he identified what he considered to be the most plausible hypothesis yet of what was behind geomagnetic field reversals and possibly how bolide (asteroid or comet) impacts and disrupted convection currents at the CMB may be responsible for flood basalts and large igneous provinces. Without going into all the details, Muller’s basic argument is as follows.

• The Earth’s magnetic field is caused by convection currents in the liquid outer core.
• Those currents constitute an amplifying, self-sustaining geodynamo.
• Convection probably starts as iron crystallizes on the surface of the solid inner core and lighter components like oxygen, silicon, and sulfur separate and rise through the liquid outer core toward the CMB, where temperatures are about a thousand degrees cooler.
• The lighter components cool and condense as slushy “sediments” at the CMB.
• Perhaps tens of meters of those buoyant sediments accumulate each million years, at the mantle’s uneven bottom layer.
• Even if the irregular slopes of the CMB “topography” are shallow, eventually the materials will slip and slide as the mixture of cooler sediments and hot liquid iron causes cooled-off, denser iron to sink back toward the inner core.
• The sinking iron would disturb the geodynamo’s convection cells, causing frequent “excursions” or reversals of the dipolar magnetic field as measured at the surface.

However, a truly massive CMB “avalanche” and the resulting convection cells could disrupt the geodynamo and cause Earth’s dipole field to collapse. And, if the mantle became hot enough, a magma plume might be sufficiently powerful to extend all the way to Earth’s surface.

Rare events, such as when a massive asteroid or comet crashed into the Earth at a sufficiently oblique angle, could trigger enormous avalanches at the CMB. When that happened, the lower mantle would jerk sideways from the force of the transferred momentum, shearing off whole mountains of accumulated sediment and releasing a downward-sinking mass of cool iron that could completely destabilize the large convection cells. Hot iron would heat the exposed mantle rapidly; within a few million years or less a plume of magma could rise through the mantle to the crust in the enormous eruptions known as fissure flows or large igneous provinces.

According to Muller, if a powerful oblique bolide impact would strip most of the CMB of its insulating sediments, that event would be followed not only by enormous flood basalts and by a very long period without any magnetic field reversals because of the time needed to collect sufficient sediment for new CMB avalanches to occur.

Muller’s theory therefore predicted that a long normal period in Earth history without magnetic field reversals would be preceded by a huge basalt flow coincident with the beginning of the long normal period. A colleague of his at UC — Berkeley, the geologist Walter Alvarez, one of the scientists who proposed the impact theory of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctions, pointed out that the formation 120 mya of one of the largest flood basalt districts in the world, the Ontong-Java Plateau, precisely coincided with the onset of the long normal period. It was not proof by any means but certainly was encouraging information.

Additional Author’s Note: Remember, at this point Muller’s work remains a fascinating theory. But it’s one interested readers should follow carefully. Under the very same topic, geoscience students should also keep their eyes on the diamond-anvil-cell experiments of Raymond Jeanloz at the University of California — Berkeley, the computer simulations by Gary Glatzmaier of University of California — Santa Cruz and Los Alamos Lab, and the Ultra Low-Velocity Zone research by Ed Garnero (Arizona State) and Quentin Williams (University of California — Santa Cruz) and others. They may or may not support Muller’s conclusions but they deal with very closely related geophysical ideas and issues.

Creationism (Creation Science)             Two (often overlapping) types of ideas are loosely called creationism: Biblical Creation and Scientific Creation. Author’s Note: The materials immediately below have been taken verbatim from web sites, especially www.creationism.org, that express those opinions and are NOT to be mistaken for beliefs I hold dear.

Biblical Creation: Using Bible texts to defend creation theory. A few primary texts include: Genesis, chapters 1 to 12 - from the 6 days of Creation till the Great Flood (1700 years later), then until just after the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of the nations. Exodus 20:11 (in the middle of the Ten Commandments, this verse states in part: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day....” Also, Luke 17:26-27 (or Matt. 24:37-39) “And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” (This statement by Christ shows that He considered the Great Flood to be a real historical event, one of Divine judgment of humankind.) And I Corinthians 15:45, which compares Adam (as a literal person) to Christ as the ‘last Adam.’

There are also many Psalms and other texts referring back to the creation. It should be noted that the book of the Bible that is most quoted in all the rest of the Bible is: Genesis. Thus the Book of Genesis is seen as not only integral to the whole, but foundationally essential for Jews, Christians, and others of faith. Now then, interpretations of Genesis may vary widely (particularly for its first three chapters, Gen. 1-3) but the original text has been codified for thousands of years.

Scientific Creation: Yes, we often use science – completely independent of any Bible references – to contend that ‘creation science’ is a plausible scientific theory. Many persons laugh at this notion at the outset but please be advised that informed creationists usually beat evolutionists in debates. We are the ones who have science on our side.

The majority of modern scientists, just like the rest of the human race, are unrepentant sinners. As such they do not want to face God. Humans often hide rather than face judgment. (Evolution provides a great hiding place.) Creationists can show evolution’s frauds and deceptions time after time, after time but it will remain an uphill battle to get the truth out regarding our origins as made (unique from the animals and) ‘in the image of God’ and human responsibility for our sins.

Author’s Rant: Whew! It’s hard for me to read crap like that and not become irritated. Just remember, uninformed opinions are like assholes; we all have them. For a lighthearted but spirited refutation of creationist misconceptions of Earth history, call your local library (or check out their catalogue on the internet) and see if they have Creation/Evolution Satiricon: Creationism Bashed. It’s written by the well-known marine geologist and geomorphologist Robert S. Dietz and illustrated by John C. Holden. Stephen G. Brush, a historian of science, examines scientific theories for dating the age of the Earth, particularly radiometric dating, in Transmuted Past: The Age of the Earth and the Evolutions of the Elements from Lyell to Patterson; Volume 2 in the series, A History of Modern Planetary Physics. Cambridge University Press, 1996. For a shorter but hardly less lucid critique of irrational claims by creationists that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, coupled with an exposition of radiometric dating methods, see Stephen G. Brush, “Finding the Age of the Earth by Physics or by Faith,” Journal of Geological Education, vol. 30, pp. 34-58, 1982.

In a challenging book intended for the lay audience, G. Brent Dalrymple reviews scientific evidence for the age of the Earth, Moon, and Solar system in such well documented and critical manner that it leaves no room for uncertainty or doubt: The Age of the Earth, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991. The book’s greatest virtue is its detailed analysis of radiometric dating methods. The many, many examples and the exhaustive chronology that are presented reveal how imaginative but sometimes wrong researchers have been in the past. But then he shows how tirelessly other researchers have checked their work, finding errors, and developing more reliable methods. It is also clear that the results of proven techniques have been checked rigorously against the results of other methods, until there can be little scientific doubt about the final conclusions. One cannot read that book with an open mind and continue believing a few warped scientists conspired to conjure up a patently false system and that hundreds and even thousands of later scientists simply fell into line with and confirmed their bizarre fantasies. Scientists are not easily duped.

Philip Kitcher, a philosopher of science at the University of Vermont, has written a marvelously lucid summary of the evidence for evolution and the overwhelming case against its opponents in a thoughtful and witty attack on ‘scientific creationism, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Updated March 2001; go online and read the excerpt, “Creationist’s Blind Dates” at: http://chem.tufts.edu/science/Geology/KitcherBlindDates.htm. Kitcher, who as a philosopher is concerned with the way science operates, is particularly adept at showing how creationists distort Karl Popper’s views on scientific method and how they misuse such books as Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Of course, readers interested in the geoscience side of the argument over creationism should read Arthur N. Strahler’s marvelously written and well-reasoned, Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy, 2^nd ed., Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1999. Strahler was professor of geomorphology in the Department of Geology at Columbia University and author of numerous textbooks in geoscience. His book is a comprehensive treatment of the ongoing conflict between scientists who accept the theory of evolution and creationists. He reviews the philosophy, methods, and sociology of empirical science from astronomy to zoology, contrasting those with the belief systems of religion and pseudoscience. In one very interesting section he establishes sound criteria for distinguishing science from pseudoscience and demonstrates with devastating logic that creation science fails to meet the criteria of scientific enterprise.

A more recent and delightful work based on sound science and leavened with literary grace and elegance is also well worth reading, no matter what your evolutionary point of view, but only if you have an open mind, which from my personal experience is something almost entirely lacking in creationists: Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. For a very well written and tightly reasoned point of view of a Christian geophysicist, see: Roger C. Wiens, PhD, Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective, material originally written in 1994 and revised in 2002: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html. And don’t forget the early and remarkable essay by the evolutionary biologist and devout Russian Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky that criticized Young Earth creationism and espoused what he called evolutionary creationism: “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” American Biology Teacher, vol. 35 125-129, 1973. Note that that article may have been inspired by the work of Jesuit physical anthropologist and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom Dobzhansky much admired.

Everyone interested in the cultural war between the adherents of evolution and creationists (in this camp I squarely place those who believe in intelligent design) should read two fairly recent books. The first, by the physical anthropologist Eugenie C. Scott, is Evolution vs. Creationism, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2005. It is both a history of the debate and a collection of essays written by partisans from both sides. Its main attribute is its clear explanation of the scientific method and the astronomical, biological, chemical, and geological bases of evolutionary theory. As good as that book is, even better is Michael Ruse’s The Evolution-Creation Struggle, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 2005. As a philosopher of science, Ruse (self-described as an ardent Darwinian) has testified against the inclusion of creationism in public school science curriculums. He cautions all of us on the use of the word “evolution,” especially since it has two meanings: the science of evolution and something he terms evolutionism, which is the part of evolutionary ideas that reaches beyond testable science. In other words, Ruse lays out what is actually a struggle between science and theology that really constitutes a war between two rival metaphysical worlds.

One positive indication, though no one should put much “faith” in it, is that courts at various levels repeatedly have held that public schools must be religiously neutral and must not advocate religious views. In 1987, in Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in the public schools was unconstitutional. And finally, I really wonder if it ever occurred to our creation science and Young Earth friends to explain with scientific rigor how the fossilized marine sedimentary rocks (from the Ordovician) forming the summit of Mount Everest, known locally as Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World, got to be nearly 30,000 feet above sea level in less than seven thousand years.

Interested bloggers should consult published articles that discuss the implications of the late-2005 decision of U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III against the Dover Area (Pennsylvania) School District in what may have been a critical test case that ruled intelligent design and creationism are one and the same and have no place in a biological science curriculum and that intelligent design "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and that the school district's promotion of it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.