The Western Town

Book excerpt: The Western town of roughly 1860-90 exists in an ephemeral moment of American history ... these towns vanished entirely from the prairie by the end of the nineteenth century. Yet even today, everyone has visited these towns, since they survive in their abstract and distilled form through the plot-generating sets of Western movies ... a clichéd but consistent host of characteristics and characters ... 22 towns in the Wild West are the protagonists in this book, including famous places like El Paso, Rio Bravo, and Lahood - not as clichés, but as constructed reality. Detailed maps offer a previously non-existent overview of spatial contexts and form the basis for an intensive exploration of architecture and urban planning. The culture of the "city without a future" in the American West between 1860 and 1900 has been maintained in the films out of which it arises. This architectural analysis does not attempt to nostalgically reactivate the Western town, but uses it instead as a vehicle to critique contemporary phenomena in terms of infrastructure, the link between architecture and city, and the role of urban planning - after the Stranger persuaded the residents of Lago to paint the whole town red, he declared himself ready to protect it from the approaching gunmen. With maps of the towns from the following films (selected): 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964), 'Buchanan Rides Alone' (1958), 'For a Few Dollars More' (1965), 'Fort Apache' (1948).