The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America (1981) by John Margolies documents unusual roadside architecture and novelty architecture from across the U.S. including motels, gas stations, drive-ins, cafes, diners, signs and billboards. |
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The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America (1981) is a book by John Margolies.
It shows unusual roadside architecture from across the U.S., including motels, gas stations, drive-ins, cafes, diners, signs, novelty architecture and billboards.
1981 back cover blurb:
"Nowhere in our landscape are there finer examples of America's native folk spirit than in the architecture that lined our highways. Motels, eating and drinking establishments, gas stations, and roadside attractions of great variety argue for the appreciation of the ordinary, the eccentric, and the whimsical, in addition to giving vivid evidence of the highly inventive nature of our commercial design.
The photographs in this book chronicle buildings that survived seven decades of American road life. Located throughout the USA, these structures attest to a time when our cities and towns were marked by character, pride, personality, and humor; and to a time when the individual proprietor's vision of what the traveler was seeking had not yet been superseded by the homogeneity brought about by large corporations and the interstate highway system."
See also
- United States Numbered Highway System
- The End of the Road
- Learning from Las Vegas (1972) by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour.
- Architectural photographers
- Road
