Apples, Art, and Architecture In UP. Who Knew?

A University Place mystery has been solved!

For nearly 40 years, an intricately patterned concrete sculpture has presided over the entry plaza of the bank building at 40th Street West and Bridgeport. But no one, not bank employees, and not even members of UP for ART, knew its history or the artist who created it.

, founded in 2000, is a community group dedicated to bringing public art to University Place. The group has researched most of the existing art in the city, and raised money for new public art.  (www.upforart.org)

The Eagles’ Nest at  Drexler Street  (Doug Granum), The Life Cycle of the Leach Creek Salmon on Bridgeport (Lavonne and George Hoivik), and Sharing at Cirque Park (John Jewel), are proud accomplishments of this group. Yet, throughout all this artistic activity, and the group’s first decade of existence, the bank sculpture remained unidentified.

Enter:  A Tacoma Weekly reporter, Dave Davison.  One September day, while just “nosing around” University Place, Dave noticed the bank sculpture, and its style reminded him of the fountain at Tacoma’s Bicentennial Pavilion Plaza, created by famed Spokane artist Harald Balazs, whom he had been researching. A trip to the Northwest Room at the Tacoma Public Library and a little more research proved him right:  Balazs (pronounced “Blaze”) was indeed the creator of the bank’s sculpture as well as that of the Pavilion Plaza, and many other works of art around Tacoma.

Now in his 80’s and living in Spokane, Balazs can look back at an illustrious career, capped by being designated as a “Washington State Living Legend. 

Between 1950 and 1970, Balazs worked locally in conjunction with Tacoma’s premier Mid-Century architect, Robert Price.  Price designed the Bicentennial Pavilion, and the bank at 40^th and Bridgeport as well, calling in Balazs to enhance the plazas of both buildings.  The bank was originally the UP branch of Puget Sound National Bank and now is a branch of Key Bank.  Over time, and with changes in banks, the history of the sculpture had been obscured.

When Dave Davison notified Key Bank personnel that they owned a Balazs “masterpiece,” he was directed to Dave Parent of the Key Bank Foundation.  Subsequently, Dave Parent e-mailed me with the news.  Why me?

Because I had  recently met with him on behalf of a local group concerned with historic preservation to request funding from the foundation.   That group’s objective is to restore a Mid-Century Modern architectural treasure (also designed by Robert Price!): The Curran House at Curran Apple Orchard Park.  Dave Parent thought that as someone involved with history and art, I would be interested.   (More about the Curran House later…)

Now, back to the other Dave, Dave Davison.  Why was he just “nosing around” University Place in the first place?  He doesn’t live here, after all.  But, at the Curran Apple Orchard Park, anyone can adopt one of the apple trees, and Dave Davison adopted a tree that he frequently checks on.  (No word yet on this year’s apple production.)

Charles and Mary Louise Curran were living in University Place by the early 1950’s.  They were acquainted with the architect Robert Price and asked him to design their home around 1954.  Price must have enjoyed that assignment, as his own home was just two blocks west of the Currans’ property.  

 Current University Place Mayor Debbie Klosowski was instrumental in the creation of the Curran Apple Orchard Park. (As well as UP for ART.)  In the early 1980’s, she and her committee successfully lobbied  Pierce County for Conservation Futures funding which enabled the by then elderly Currans to sell their house and land to the UP park system as open space, and still live there as long as they wished.    

There’s no Balazs sculpture at the Curran House or Orchard. One has to travel a half-mile up 40^th street to Key Bank to see one.  But there, in the bank’s plaza, still another connection emerges. As Dave Davison points out, “It is sheer coincidence that the shapes of the sculpture find an echo in the giant red key that is the logo of the building’s current occupant.”  Key Bank is now in the process of refurbishing the Balazs sculpture.

So there you have it:  From apples to art to architecture, it all fits together.

P.S.  When you visit the public art in University Place, don’t miss One Step Ahead, by Georgia Gerber at the new city hall/library building, and The Slug, by Christopher Hoppin.  It’s in Homestead Park.

Karen Benveniste