Barry Wasserman is a graduate of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and served as Professor Emeritus in the Department of Architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He co-wrote Ethics and the Practice of Architecture, a widely respected exploration of professional responsibility and moral decision-making in architectural practice.
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Barry Wasserman’s America
Bakeries, Bookstores, and Bowling Alleys
Barry Wasserman’s America
Bakeries, Bookstores, and Bowling Alleys
Barry L. Wasserman has spent a lifetime shaping buildings — and now he’s reflecting on the places that shape America.
A retired architect, educator, and author, Wasserman once oversaw public architecture as the State Architect of California under Governor Jerry Brown. Later, as Design Review Administrator for Sacramento County and as Professor of Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona, he taught that design was about more than form and function — it was about soul, about what connects people to place.
Many years ago, Wasserman began planning a book that captured that connection — not through blueprints or building codes, but through bakeries, bookstores, and bowling alleys. Though the book was never written, the idea continues to guide the way he sees the world.
“I was going to write a new kind of travel book,” he recalls, “a new B&B book. But not that kind of B&B. Mine wasn’t about where you sleep — it was about where you feel the place.”
The inspiration struck decades earlier, when Wasserman and his wife were visiting their son in Olympia, Washington. They wandered through small coastal towns — Whidbey Island, Port Townsend — and discovered that the places they remembered most weren’t the ones in guidebooks. They were the ones with heritage: a bakery where flour dust hung in the air, a used bookstore with handwritten signs and wobbly shelves, a bowling alley where fishermen and shopkeepers shared lanes.
“That’s when I realized,” he says, “those are the real B&Bs. Bookstores and bakeries. And, eventually, bowling alleys. That’s where the life of a community still breathes.”
For Wasserman, these weren’t quaint diversions. They were the living infrastructure of authenticity — the everyday architecture of America.
“When you walk into a real bakery,” he explains, “you know it. You can feel it. The bread has weight, the crust has purpose. It’s made by someone who cares about what they’re doing — not just producing amber bread.”
He laughs at the phrase — “amber bread” — his shorthand for the fluffy, mass-produced loaves that look perfect and taste like nothing. “I want gutsy bread,” he says, “bread with texture and attitude — the kind that tells you the baker’s proud of it.”
The same goes for bookstores. “The best ones,” he says, “feel like a conversation. You don’t just buy a book — you discover something. They’re like living museums, full of surprise and serendipity.”
It’s an explorer’s mindset — one that has carried Wasserman from the halls of government to the worn countertops of small-town America. As an architect, he studied how communities are built. As a traveler, he’s discovering how they endure.
He’s not interested in chain stores or glossy facades. “You can’t understand America by stopping at Starbucks,” he says. “You understand it by walking down Main Street, by smelling the bread, talking to the bookseller, watching kids bowl after school. That’s where you meet real people — where the stories still live.”
Though the book was imagined long ago and never completed, its spirit endures. Wasserman still seeks out those small, meaningful places — not to escape the world, but to rediscover what’s genuine in it.
“In a way,” he says, smiling, “I guess I’m still an architect. I’m just looking for the structures that hold people together — not in concrete or glass, but in community.”
~ Al Zagofsky
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