Roadside America: Architectural Relics from a Vanishing Past

by John Margolies (Photographer), C. Ford Peatross, Phil Patton

The native genius of America's mid-era automobile culture

Before the advent of corporate communications and architectural uniformity, America's built environment was a free-form landscape of individual expression. Signs, artifacts, and even buildings ranged from playful to eccentric, from deliciously cartoonish to quasipsychedelic. Photographer John Margolies spent over three decades and drove more than 100,000 miles documenting these fascinating and endearingly artisanal examples of roadside advertising and fantasy structures, a fast-fading aspect of Americana.

This book brings together approximately 400 color photographs of Main Street signs, movie theaters, gas stations, fast food restaurants, motels, roadside attractions, miniature golf courses, dinosaurs, giant figures and animals, and fantasy coastal resorts. In an age when online shopping and mega-malls have reconfigured American consumerism, stripping away idiosyncracy in favor of a bland homogeneity, Margolies's elegiac 30-year survey reminds us of a more innocent unpredictable and colorful past.

Genres: Travel, Photography, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/03/art...

Reviews

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book makes me want to jump in my time machine and go back to the 80s. Because who wouldn't want to have a cup of coffee at The Coffee Pot Tavern in Bedford, Pennsylvania...which is shaped like a coffee pot?! I was happy to see my city represented (only once, surprisingly) on page 218 with the former glorious Beltline Drive-In Theatre, picture from 1982. The massive neon sign is flanked by Goofy and no, not Donald Duck, but Bugs Bunny who suspiciously looks like he's giving you the finger.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up as I did in a shifting time where Americana is being prized as art but still simultaneously torn and replaced with personalityless apartment complexes, banks, and strip plazas - I absolute prize this book. Visually, it's a tour de force, but even the introduction and the subsequent paragraphs here and there are luminous and thought-provoking. I've not yet read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" - I tried so many times, hoping for wanderlust and nomadism, and couldn't find it or get into it. Yet all of that is swirling here and in the Library of Congress' entire catalog on Margolies. I bought two versions - the one with the giant Land-Before-Time-looking green brontosaurus on the front, and the Taschen one translated into English, German, and French tidbits, with the toothy Gatorland door on it. Each version has different photos and sections, but the same central theme of preserving the America of eons past, a slow, homey, kind of Pleasantville vibe that is becoming more remote. I think the introduction opining Margolies as a kind of Herodotus was a very apt comparison. Thank God my father took me to eat Moon Soup and homemade vichyssoise at the Chalet Suzanne before it closed its doors in August 2014; thank God my mother stopped at Dinosaur World on the way to Tampa that one summer so I could experience Jurassic Park without the soundtrack that frightened me. Thank God my husband loves these kinds of places as much as I do, and allows me to stop there, savor, and reflect. Margolies past away some years ago, but through his inimitable body of work, his spirit lives on, and I enjoyed becoming acquainted with this architectural and photographical pioneer through these volumes.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice book of photos from the Margolies collection at the Library of Congress with a description of his style and methods at the beginning. Admittedly I'm very biased when it comes to this, seeing as how I created the Library's story map for it: Roadside America

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love roadside attractions, so I was happy to stumble upon this title while browsing a Taschen book sale. I'm both envious of John Margolies and thankful for the time, money, and film he spent to create this archive of 20th century Americana.

[Cole Perrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only wish it was longer.

[Derek Wolfgram · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm thankful to Taschen for giving John Margolies the coffee-table book treatment he deserves. The preeminent photographer of the American roadside for the last three decades, Margolies has preserved a record of the drive-in theaters, motels, diners, gas stations, miniature golf, curio shops and tourist attractions that are increasingly disappearing from the blue highways of America. If you enjoy the road less travelled, or if you've ever dreamed of recreating the trip from Chicago to L.A. on Route 66, this is a book for you. In addition to photographing beautiful structures on the road, Margolies' technique is impeccable. Photos are composed beautifully, always feature a brilliant blue sky, and rarely include any hint of what year (or even decade) they were taken. In fact, there's a great story in Phil Patton's introduction about the entire bar that Margolies bought a round for to bribe the patrons into moving their cars away from a building he wanted to shoot. From Spot Cleaners in Seattle to the Trail Drive-In in Sarasota, this is a beautiful collection of photos reminiscent of the golden age of automobile travel.

[David Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just what it sounds like: photos of motels, diners, coffee shops, movie theaters, gas stations and other commercial structures, some faded, some pristine, from odd corners of America. Some are paired nicely for humorous effect, such as two successive images involving a mock Statue of Liberty, one at a miniature golf course, one outside a heating and air conditioning business.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Margolies is the great documenter of 20th Century roadside American architecture, and this is nice, large-format collection of some of his best photos. Read my full review at http://www.interestingideas.com/updat...

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of fun (although I did think that adding pictures from miniature golf courses was cheating a bit). I didn't bother to read the intro (in any of the languages), because frankly I don't really care what some egghead has to say about all of this stuff.

[Jana Eichhorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

So perfect. If I ever own a coffee table, this will be the only book on it.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable. A nice work of collection about a topic I have been intrigued by for quite awhile. A mix of visual investigation about tourism, advertising and folk art. Vivid color and background texts.