Memory Lanes - Page 5

Kingpins and the Showstopper

How did architects Powers, Daly & DeRosa become the kingpins of mid-century California bowling center design?

Some attribute the firm's success in that genre to their design of one incredible early bowling center, which became their showstopper calling card. Others point to PD&D's continuous 'design magic'—how, many times over, they brought together thrilling bowling center entranceways, luxurious lounge areas, and the extensive use of native stone.

Gordon Powers, Austin Daly, and Pasquale 'Pat' DeRosa teamed up for the first time in the early 1950s, establishing their own architectural firm in Long Beach. Powers and Daly handled the engineering and business aspects of the firm, and "DeRosa was the creative force—he sold it," according to Powers in a 2013 interview.

"Designing motels, restaurants, and residential plots is pleasant, remunerative work," explained writer Mort Luby, Jr. in a 1962 article in Bowlers Journal. "You get the feeling, however, that the men [PD&D] who created the new concept in bowling center construction would like nothing better than to get their teeth into a 32- or 48-lane project."

That was nothing for PD&D. They'd go on to design a center with a whopping 116 championship lanes: Willow Grove Park Lanes, in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. It was an "800-foot-long, V-shaped building that took 15 months to build," according to Andrew Hurley in Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks. "Viewed from the outside, it was nothing, if not breathtaking."

But what was the secret behind PD&D's extraordinary success? In an interview with historian Chris Nichols, Gordon Powers' two-word answer was simple and unwavering: "Covina Bowl," built in 1955.

For subsequent projects after Covina Bowl, according to Nichols, "Powers would just drive prospective clients out to the Covina Bowl site in his car, and they would be so amazed, they would just want their own bowling center."

The 1962 Bowlers Journal story adds to the legend: Covina Bowl "ultimately became the vanguard for the grandiose class of bowling center architecture which is still called, for want of a better label, 'California Style.'"

By 1958, the Powers, Daly & DeRosa firm was doing so much business in Northern California that they opened a second location, in San Mateo. They designed approximately 50 bowling centers between 1955 and 1962, with at least two dozen of them throughout the state documented as built.

Though it has been said that architectural critics of the mid-century dismissed the work of Powers, Daly & DeRosa, criticizing their buildings "as garish and far too extravagant to maintain," according to Hurley, their bowling centers nonetheless made a huge impact on the masses and quickly became the "people's country clubs."

And today, after all the smoke has cleared, PD&D's bowling palace designs are highly regarded as both groundbreaking architecture and awe-inspiring works of art.