Autumn and Architecture in the Atomic City

This past week the Hounds and I took one of our usual strolls along the Columbia River:

We decided to look for some autumn foliage.

And we found some!

Then we tootled on down the road to the vast research area in the north end of town, where places like Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have big campuses.

And we found some lovely autumn foliage there, too:

On another day, we decided to explore Richland's architectural wonders more fully.  Here is a building that as a youth, I always referred to as the Broken Eggshell Church:

Much of the housing was government-issue, put up in the 1940s:

Then in the 1960s people got creative with non-government homes:

I call this one the "Fire Lookout House":

Some people went a little overboard -- this home is in the middle of a more modest 1960s/70s ranch home neighborhood:

There is a whole block of homes from the early 1970s that sport arches -- here is one example:

Then there's the Mushroom House -- it sits on a hill, and there are windows on the back side.

Non-residential architecture can also be quite spiffy.  Here is the Federal Building in its mid-century modern glory:

There used to be a local history museum in the federal building, which we visited on grade-school outings.  Because the local history consisted mostly of the Manhattan Project, we got to play with some unusual displays.  There was a plexiglass box full of radioactive items -- you put your hand in a thick rubber glove to reach inside to touch them.  There was a giant robotic arm that you could manipulate to stack alphabet blocks.  My favorite was the nuclear reactor diorama -- it was interactive, and after learning all about its various functions, it would simulate an accident and you had to push the right buttons in the right order to avert disaster.  Naturally, being children, our goal was to push the wrong buttons and watch the lights go all flashy red and the alarms go off -- core meltdown!  Whee!

What can I say -- there was little in the way of entertainment back then.

Well, except for the movies, of course.  Our local theater showed double features for fifty cents, a favorite Saturday adventure.   It was called the Uptown Theater, anchoring a corner of the Uptown shopping center, which opened in 1949:

Today it is still used for special events such as film festivals and musical theater.  They're putting on Edwin Drood: The Musical next month.

And Richland also has a community theater, the Richland Playhouse, which was built in 1944.  It was a movie theater until the drama company (the Richland Players, also established in 1944) took it over in 1971.  I remember going to movies there -- they once showed The Longest Day, an appropriately titled WWII epic that was so long the theater showed it over two nights. 

That rounds up my brief survey of exciting Richland architecture.  The Hounds were not impressed by our tour -- back at the house, Pippin just wanted to know why his food bowl was empty:

While Truman just wanted to know why I wasn't sitting next to him on the bed:

Well, I'm sitting there now, so he is happy.  And there is food in the bowls.  All is well in the Atomic City.