Better Living Through Petrochemicals
September 28, 2022 7:27 AM Subscribe
Beginning in 1941, Alden Dow carved an entire town, Lake Jackson, Texas, out of a coastal swamp as a grand design experiment in modern, low-cost communal living—for the workers at Dow Chemical’s new magnesium and styrene plants in Freeport and Velasco, built quicky during wartime mobilization with Dow’s purchase of 1,000 acres of resource-rich land in 1940. I say “Dow carved,” but this phrasing belies the complex assemblage of agencies and historical determinants, policies and technics, that were the material conditions of possibility for Lake Jackson. from Development Film, 194X: Alden B. Dow, Lake Jackson, and the Infrastructure of the Petrochemical Good Life by Justus Nieland
Midland: Alden B. Dow Home & Studio
City of enchantment: The man and company behind Lake Jackson
Midland: Alden B. Dow Home & Studio
City of enchantment: The man and company behind Lake Jackson
Really interesting. I grew up in Midland and only knew of Alden B Dow as an architect--did not know about the film-making and have never heard of Lake Jackson! My grandfather worked for Dow but he passed away before I was born and beyond that nobody else in my family worked there, so we were always some of the odd ducks out in Midland. Still, it's been a funny experience to learn as I get older that things that seemed so mundane to me (like Alden B Dow houses littering the landscape) are not things everybody had in their hometown. I'm not sure how I missed all this information about Alden B., though.
posted by kittensyay at 8:45 AM on September 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by kittensyay at 8:45 AM on September 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
Still, it's been a funny experience to learn as I get older that things that seemed so mundane to me (like Alden B Dow houses littering the landscape) are not things everybody had in their hometown. I'm not sure how I missed all this information about Alden B., though.
Conversely, I found that this was interesting to read because I sort of grew up in the shadow of Dow Chemical operations but without this attendant architectural stuff. There was a whole bunch of local sponsorship of stuff by Dow, but nothing like this (granted, this was in Canada).
In 1941, when Dow began his Gulf Coast design work, Dow Chemical was rapidly expanding its operations, on pace to join the three industrial giants (du Pont, Union Carbide, and Allied Chemical) in shared dominance of the U.S. chemical market. Founded by Alden Dow’s father Herbert H. Dow in 1889, the Dow Chemical Co. had built its brand on the chemistry of brine and the extraction of basic halogens—chlorine, bromine, iodine—from the vast brine deposits, salty residues of ancient seas, buried deep beneath the surface of Michigan farmland. These elements, as an admiring feature in Fortune magazine explained, “put Dow in a basic field of chemistry, resting on cheap, almost limitless natural resources—a field that by concentration and continuous research might open out endlessly”
This brings back a vivid memory - when I was a kid, my father, who was a chemical engineer, would sometimes take me to his office if he had to go in on a weekend (back in the days of paper files and Telex machines). For a while, his office was in a facility that was adjacent to a Dow Chemical plant. In the hallways were glass cabinets full of respirators, next to which were signs that read, more or less:
RESPIRATORS FOR USE IN THE EVENT OF A CHLORINE OR BROMINE GAS RELEASE FROM DOW CHEMICAL.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:10 AM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Conversely, I found that this was interesting to read because I sort of grew up in the shadow of Dow Chemical operations but without this attendant architectural stuff. There was a whole bunch of local sponsorship of stuff by Dow, but nothing like this (granted, this was in Canada).
In 1941, when Dow began his Gulf Coast design work, Dow Chemical was rapidly expanding its operations, on pace to join the three industrial giants (du Pont, Union Carbide, and Allied Chemical) in shared dominance of the U.S. chemical market. Founded by Alden Dow’s father Herbert H. Dow in 1889, the Dow Chemical Co. had built its brand on the chemistry of brine and the extraction of basic halogens—chlorine, bromine, iodine—from the vast brine deposits, salty residues of ancient seas, buried deep beneath the surface of Michigan farmland. These elements, as an admiring feature in Fortune magazine explained, “put Dow in a basic field of chemistry, resting on cheap, almost limitless natural resources—a field that by concentration and continuous research might open out endlessly”
This brings back a vivid memory - when I was a kid, my father, who was a chemical engineer, would sometimes take me to his office if he had to go in on a weekend (back in the days of paper files and Telex machines). For a while, his office was in a facility that was adjacent to a Dow Chemical plant. In the hallways were glass cabinets full of respirators, next to which were signs that read, more or less:
RESPIRATORS FOR USE IN THE EVENT OF A CHLORINE OR BROMINE GAS RELEASE FROM DOW CHEMICAL.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:10 AM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Read this way, the article’s insistence on the town’s youth (“more children per block than you have ever seen in your life!”) or its exhortation that “you notice where the children are playing—clean white homes trimmed in bright colors” are heard as coded endorsements of the sheer fecundity of Lake Jackson’s newborn, state-funded whiteness.
This is perverse not only in its white supremacy, but also in light of the impact that Dow's products had on children in playing in other neighbourhoods. Children like Kim Phúc, for example.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:16 AM on September 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is perverse not only in its white supremacy, but also in light of the impact that Dow's products had on children in playing in other neighbourhoods. Children like Kim Phúc, for example.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:16 AM on September 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
When I was a kid, playing with my Gilbert chemistry set, chemicals were cool, they were the future. Now when I see the word I get a shiver.
posted by tommasz at 12:33 PM on September 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 12:33 PM on September 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
I grew up in a village just outside Freeport. My father worked at Dow most of his adult life. I don't remember any interesting architecture in Freeport or Lake Jackson except for my parent's house which was built in the spirit of Mies van der Rohe's Glass House (leading to the small town rumor that we were affiliated with the Mafia). We were about 10 miles from Dow as the crow flies. On occasion there would be a big boom and the glass would shake which meant there had been an explosion at the plant.
posted by arancidamoeba at 5:32 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by arancidamoeba at 5:32 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Freeport
my great-grandfather had a Ford dealership in Portland not too far away. I think you mean Freeland Michigan.
I remember one time friend and I were driving to the mall and we pulled up to a stop sign in Freeland Michigan and next to us was this nice elderly lady and a yellow Cadillac with a yellow suit yellow hat and I remember she turned to us with a bit of a sneer and my buddy said to me what's the matter you can't got your tongue. saw a B-17 there once. my dad was going to buy a 39 Ford I believe right around the street from a gas station I think. at dusk as teenagers sometimes we would drive around and drive near Dow property fences,access roads basically and occasionally see Dow security we used to call them Dow cops. but if you got close enough to the plants at night they were eerily lit belching, white smoke pluming, smell of slight chlorine and Ziploc bags.
Cathy Guisewite' house was a few blocks from where I went to high school.
I knew the inside of the Masonic Hall. Midland is where I learned to act. it'swhere I got busted. but those darn drills we had to stay inside and one time it wasn't a drill I had to stay inside for 2 hours prolly a chlorine leak but I snuck outside and I tell you one thing, it was eerie there was just no one around not even a bird you after the siren. it's where I had my first girlfriend drove my first car and the nuclear power plant that was converted, my dad worked on that and I was lucky enough to get like two tours. between the leafy streets an old fashioned downtown it's a city of mundane mystery. the most vivid memory I have was a gray rainy afternoon when John Lennon was shot I was just getting in the car at Kmart. I think I cried.
posted by clavdivs at 11:31 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
my great-grandfather had a Ford dealership in Portland not too far away. I think you mean Freeland Michigan.
I remember one time friend and I were driving to the mall and we pulled up to a stop sign in Freeland Michigan and next to us was this nice elderly lady and a yellow Cadillac with a yellow suit yellow hat and I remember she turned to us with a bit of a sneer and my buddy said to me what's the matter you can't got your tongue. saw a B-17 there once. my dad was going to buy a 39 Ford I believe right around the street from a gas station I think. at dusk as teenagers sometimes we would drive around and drive near Dow property fences,access roads basically and occasionally see Dow security we used to call them Dow cops. but if you got close enough to the plants at night they were eerily lit belching, white smoke pluming, smell of slight chlorine and Ziploc bags.
Cathy Guisewite' house was a few blocks from where I went to high school.
I knew the inside of the Masonic Hall. Midland is where I learned to act. it'swhere I got busted. but those darn drills we had to stay inside and one time it wasn't a drill I had to stay inside for 2 hours prolly a chlorine leak but I snuck outside and I tell you one thing, it was eerie there was just no one around not even a bird you after the siren. it's where I had my first girlfriend drove my first car and the nuclear power plant that was converted, my dad worked on that and I was lucky enough to get like two tours. between the leafy streets an old fashioned downtown it's a city of mundane mystery. the most vivid memory I have was a gray rainy afternoon when John Lennon was shot I was just getting in the car at Kmart. I think I cried.
posted by clavdivs at 11:31 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
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Don't ask about percentage efficiencies, energy overhead, or costs, or you're a hater and aren't supporting industry.
posted by bonehead at 8:34 AM on September 28, 2022 [6 favorites]