Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
The 23-year-old didn’t just want it bad. He wanted it really bad.
“I had $300. I had a train ticket. I could sleep on the floor of a friend of a friend of a friend’s loft.”
Not the most luxurious way to visit New York City.
“I wanted to test myself in a big market and see what a real architect is.”
Having finished his fourth year in Louisiana Tech’s architecture program, the young man had previously met whom he considered one of the country’s best architects.
“Hey, I may show up on your doorstep one day.”
He did.
“I asked the secretary for a piece of stationery, and I scrawled off this letter that looked like it was written by somebody who had been taken hostage. “You told me when I’m in town to come see you. Well, I’m here.”
Later that day and overwhelmed with “the ignorance of youth”, the kid who didn’t know any better got the big wig on the phone.
“Did you get my letter?”
“Yeah, I got your letter.”
“Well?”
“You start Monday.”
“How much are you going to pay me to come work for you?”
“$300 a week you fuc*. Be here Monday.”
Shreveport’s Christopher Coe, who has designed and built buildings all over the world (think high rises, college campuses, and performing arts centers), told me that story, and his story, late afternoon at Starbuck’s on Line Avenue. We weren’t paying customers, as Christopher doesn’t like to talk and eat, and I don’t drink coffee. (Don’t tell them I still used their restroom).
“That blew my world open. To be in those offices and be around the people who were practicing architecture at the highest possible level . . . .”
One of four children and the son of a non-commissioned Air Force officer, Christopher was born at Barksdale Air Force Base. Christopher’s early years were spent in Puerto Rico and Mississippi, before his father was transferred back to Bossier City.
“(As a child), I was a busy builder. I was always making planes and trains. I was always fabricating something. Someone should have said, ‘Hey, you should think about being an architect,’ or introduced me to an architect, but that never happened.”
But Christopher did take up music and was good enough to earn a tuba scholarship (who knew there was such a thing) to LSU and studied landscape architecture. After two years, Christopher left the program and eventually enrolled in Louisiana Tech’s architect program. He earned two degrees, then a master’s degree from Yale University.
One of Christopher’s early projects as a real architect was helping with the design of The Getty, a world-famous Los Angeles art museum. From there, he went to work for himself – twice – and opened a Los Angeles office for a large architectural firm.
It was during Christopher’s first time being self-employed that he landed “the second greatest project I ever had.” (The first was a house on Cross Lake).
Hannah-Barbera, which produced television animation classics like The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo,
Yogi Bear, and The Jetsons, needed to expand their LA headquarters. Short on experience but long on confidence, Christopher got the job.
(The executive) handed me a stack of George Jetson video tapes. Literally, I’m telling you Tony, he said, ‘Here, go make it look like this. We did. The headquarters looks like the Jetsons building. It was so fun – an architect’s dream.”
After 33 years on the East and West coasts, Christopher felt a tug on his heart.
“My mind would drift to coming home.” His parents, brothers, and sister were still in Shreveport-Bossier. After being invested into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects (a really big deal), Christopher’s “to-do” list was getting short.
With plans to retire, Christopher (along with his wife, Sophie), moved back south. But a funny thing happened to those retirement plans.
“I got busy. I got (unsolicited) work. So much work that I bought an office building on Line Avenue. I have a staff. I have all new computers. I have a healthcare plan. I have HR (human resources). I have everything I didn’t want.”
And you know the old saying about how you can take the architect out of architecture, but you can’t take architecture out of the architect?
“After the 30-year gap of being gone, I quickly realized how much the visual identity of the town had degraded. Some of it by lack of care, some of it intentional. It bothered me. Shreveport needs help. I’ve got some skills. I think I can help.”
Assuming Christopher – who is helping reform the old the Joe D. Waggoner building into a state office building – had better things to do than yuck it up with me, I asked my final question. As always, what has he learned in life that might benefit others?
“Try to find your passion and be persistent about it. Envelop yourself in that passion. If you’re going to be ‘that’, be the best ‘that’ you can be . . . . Dive in. Swim to the top. Always learn. Always be at it. Drive it. Dig at it. Claw at it.”
And if someone tells you to come see them when you’re in town, take them up on it.
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.
The Journal’s weekly “What’s Your Story?” series is sponsored by Morris & Dewett Injury Lawyers.