 For All To See Tucker, Sadler & Associates, San Diego’s landmark |
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Well, we tried. We received a complete list of projects from Tucker, Sadler & Associates. The hard copy ran 104 pages, about 32 projects per page, except some projects were listed several times because they were broken into sub-projects. From the disc, we created a version that, in 5-point type (less than half the size of the type you’re reading) and at three columns per Metropolitan page, would take about four or five pages of almost unreadable words in the magazine. Something like this:
The idea was to illustrate the volume of work produced by Tucker, Sadler & Associates, which observes its 40th anniversary this month, rather than merely publishing two or three photos of buildings you've already seen. Alas, we’ll pass on the complete list - too many pages devoted to type too small - but it was a good idea, almost. In 100 years just about no one will be talking about Harold G. Sadler, except occasionally his great-grandchildren, who will marvel at his accomplishments as they share the last ones standing with their own children. That's one of the benefits of being a good architect, leaving landmarks that might stand the test of time. Sadler is not known today for being an especially innovative or outrageous architect, not like Rob Wellington Quigley. But Sadler and his firm, Tucker, Sadler & Associates, are rather distinguished for being so solidly reliable, comfortably creative, for having survived and thrived for 40 years - this month - since the 26-year-old Hal Sadler, structural engineer Ed Bennett and architect Tom Tucker designed their first project together, a grocery store, working out of a little apartment in Ocean Beach. "We started off with things like markets, Safeway stores, some housing, and eventually we got the Fed Mart account from Sol Price," recalls Sadler, the designer of the team and the most public face of a firm that grew to 40-or-so employees. "Sol was funny because he wanted very much an industrial kind of building, so it would look like (products inside) were cheap. It was always a fight with him to see how much we could put on a building without him pulling things off." Sadler credits the firm's success to its diversity of products. During housing recessions he's seen the collapse of colleagues who specialized in housing, and he's seen commercial architects starving when vacancies were high. His wife Mary's uncle, a San Joaquin farmer, said he could get rich on a single crop but would sleep better growing a variety. Her uncle also said a business partnership is like a marriage, but without the sex to make up. We presume he means he enjoys a good fight at home more than at work - he and Mary, surviving 45 years of marriage, have two daughters and four grandchildren - but we didn’t ask.
A 1955 graduate of the USC School of Architecture, Sadler remembers walking into his first San Diego meeting of the American Institute of Architects. "There were only about a half-dozen guys there, and I thought, 'Who are all these old people?'" The prominent architects of the time were Frank Hope Sr., Pat Paderewski, Richard Wheeler, Louis Bodmer... Roy Drew, 84, the senior partner of Mosher Drew Watson Ferguson, the only San Diego architectural firm that’s survived longer, thinks Tucker, Sadler has been "fine, heavy competition, just swell." At age 66, Sadler is nearly the last of his own contemporaries still plugging. Tucker retired earlier this year. Frank Hope Jr. and Ward Deems retired a few years ago. Homer Delawie is still active, but he took the week off when it was time for the interview. Rob Quigley, the fanciful architect lucky enough to work with Sadler on the new San Diego Central Library project, says Sadler is "one of the few that my generation looked up to. He brings a dignity and warm grace to our sometimes very difficult profession." Not that you'd know it talking with Sadler about the Bank of America Plaza. As gentlemanly as Sadler usually is, he's not above criticizing a client, or at least a past client. Even though the design of the Downtown BofA Plaza came more than a decade after the anti-war protest burning of the Isla Vista branch, BofA was "paranoid" of the stepped plaza design, Sadler says. Those giant "steps" that form the roof of the main office were supposed to include real stairs and seating to create an amphitheater and active public plaza. Instead, "there's no music, nobody goes up there much," says Sadler. "The building should have been eight to 10 stories higher with an articulated roof, but the bank didn’t see fit to do that." So BofA Plaza became one of the stubbiest towers in a Downtown full of stubs.
More graceful is the Union Bank of California Building, just across from BofA. Designed originally for Andy Borthwick's First National Bank, before Bob Peterson and Dick Silberman got in there, the project was Tucker, Sadler's biggest break in terms of visibility and stature in the community. Tucker was 43, Bennett, 42, and Sadler just 34 years old when the project was completed. On Borthwick's board were the likes of Joe Jessop and Walter Trepte, Evan Jones and Ewart Goodwin, pillars of San Diego whose good words meant new business for the architects. It was San Diego’s most beautiful tower of the 1960s, ranks as one of Sadler's favorite, still is among the city's most elegant, and this year took top prize among modernized office buildings in BOMA International's worldwide competition. Tucker, Sadler has designed more space in Downtown San Diego than any other firm. Its work includes the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Civic Center Plaza, the City Parkade and the Ace/Koll Columbia Center. Current projects include the stalled expansion of the San Diego Convention Center.
Tom Tucker is no slouch - his service to the Escondido Planning Commission and other city endeavors made him one of Escondido's most active volunteers - but Sadler's list of community services is twice as long, from chairing the San Diego Parks and Recreation Board to presiding over Children's Hospital, from serving the board of Sharp Memorial Hospital to chairing San Diegans Inc., from presiding over Point Loma Presbyterian Church to the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau. Mike Stepner, the former San Diego city architect, says Sadler deserves public appreciation not just for his professionalism, but also for his volunteer efforts to so many civic activities. Art Castro assumed the reins as president of Tucker, Sadler & Associates in July. After 20 years with the firm, Castro concludes that Sadler's public and private personas are the same. "I can’t think of one time" Sadler has lost his temper, Castro says. "He's consistent, an individual with a lot of integrity, very considerate." From Tom Tucker, Castro says he "learned a lot from him on the business side, where a lot of architects are weak."
Sadler says San Diego has grown from a town with a few decision-makers to a big city with a frustrating bureaucracy led by politicians "more mindful of watching their behinds.... We have more input today from community planning groups, making the leaders more cautious and watchful. That's made it more difficult to get things done and push things through." He thinks Susan Golding has been more effective than her predecessor, believes Pete Wilson deserves his reputation for trying to curb suburban sprawl, and draws satisfaction from the continuing evolution of San Diego’s Centre City and Embarcadero, although he's still bummed that he lost the chance to design a Hilton Hotel near Seaport Village. He says the litigation delay of the convention center expansion "is just ridiculous. The community has lost literally hundreds of millions of dollars because of assumptions from (litigant Richard) Rider about how things are going. To the rest of the country, we look ridiculous. A few people are raising Cain. In the long haul, we’ll win." Sadler says he hopes people remember him for improving his city, practicing integrity, making friends out of clients and enjoying himself. Odds are, because he's an architect who designed things that will last, he’ll be remembered longer than most people. |
