Roadside America

This title presents roadside Americana, fantasy, kitsch and joy on the American roadside. 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 artisanal to eccentric, from deliciously kitsch to quasi-psychedelic. Photographer John Margolies spent decades documenting these eye-catching and endearingly idiosyncratic examples of roadside advertising and fantasy structures, a fast-fading form of Americana. This book brings together approximately 400 color photographs arranged into chapters by subject: Main Street signs, movie theaters, gas stations, fast food restaurants, motels, roadside attractions, miniature golf, and Atlantic coast resorts. In an age when online shopping and mega-malls have reconfigured American consumerism, Margolies' 30-year survey reminds us of a more innocent, unpredictable and colorful past.