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Howard Johnson’s

John Margolies Photographs Roadside America

John Margolies in 1970 caused a stir, and not a good one, in highbrow architectural citcles. He did it by putting on an exhibit about Morris Lapidus at the venerable Architectural League. Lapidus designed flamboyant Florida hotels, and seven years earlier the architectural establishment had denounced him as cheap, vulgar and incompetent.

Lapidus, it turned out, was ahead of his time, and so was Margolies. Margolies became the foremost photographer of what is now known as vernacular architecture. He photographed roadside architecture in 28 states. His subjects included dairy bars shaped like milk bottles, giant Mr. Peanut signs, Howard Johnson’s, Holiday Inns, tourist cabins, Chinese restaurants, diners and hundreds of miniature golf courses.

Hilltop Steakhouse sign in Saugus, Mass.

He began lecturing, writing books and exhibiting his photographs around the world. Prestigious organizations like the Guggenheim Foundation supported his work with fellowships. The Library of Congress, which now maintains an archive of his work, credits him with influencing the post-modern movement in architecture.

“I liked places where everything was screaming for attention: ‘Look at me. Look at me’,” he told the Washington Post.

John Margolies

He was born on May 16, 1940, in New Canaan, Conn., the son of Ethel Polacheck Margolies, a painter, and Asher Margolies, a Macy’s executive. As a child, his parents took him on road trips but refused to let him stop at the roadside attractions that beckoned to him.

“My parents’ generation thought it was the ugliest stuff in the world,” Margolies later said.

Toy Sun restaurant, Berlin, Conn.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and then went to work as an editor at Architectural Record magazine. He also promoted Andy Warhol’s work and appeared as a cameo in Warhol’s 1965 film, Camp.And then he got a job at the Architectural League, where he mounted the exhibit on Lapidus. It featured such Florida hotels as the Americana and the Eden Roc. Margolies called it “the Architecture of Joy.”

Others called it kitsch. The show, wrote New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, “is accompanied by the strains of Muzak and the outraged cries of those league members who feel that the show is an unpardonable breach of standards,”

John Margolies On the Road

Fed up with New York, he moved to California. He started down the road in 1972 taking pictures of novelty architecture. Margolies wanted to capture them before they disappeared and, in some cases, they fell to the wrecking ball days after he recorded them.

Miss Bellows Fall diner.

According to the Library of Congress, “in many instances, the only remaining record of these buildings is on Margolies’ film, because tourist architecture was endangered by the expansion of the interstate system and changing travel desires.”

He drove for as long as eight weeks, usually in a rented Cadillac. He liked to travel in early spring or fall, when tourists didn’t crowd the roads. Margolies stayed in motels, always bringing clothespins to secure the draperies and a Fred Flintstone night light.

Modern Diner, Pawtucket, R.I.

He shot in color with a 35 mm Canon FT. Margolies almost never photographed people; instead, he snapped buildings in isolation under clear blue skies. He generally did his shooting in the early morning, when the light, he said, was like golden syrup. Sometimes he had to wait quite a while for the skies to clear.

Chief Passamaquoddy, Freeport, Maine

He drove to places like Route 1 in Massachusetts, the Berlin Turnpike in Connecticut, Weirs Beach in Laconia, N.H., and Trenton, Maine.

What’s Important

“People generally have thought that what’s important are the large, unique architectural monuments,” he told a Canadian newspaper in 1987. “They think Toronto’s City Hall is important, but not those wonderful gnome’s-castle gas stations in Toronto.”

Half Dollar Bar, Peabody, Mass.

Just 11 years after the controversial exhibit on Morris Lapidus, another New York Times architecture critic had high praise for John Margolies. “[He] led dozens of his colleagues toward an appreciation of those buildings that might be called the exclamation points of the landscape,” wrote Goldberger.

Sweetwood Cottages, Weirs Beach, N.H.

Margolies is also credited with recognizing buildings added to the National Register of Historic Places.

John Margolies died on May 26, 2016.

All images from the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive at the Library of Congress.

This story updated in 2023.

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The Rise and Fall of the New England Motel

The family-owned motel that flowered along New England’s roads after World War II has grown increasingly scarce. Today, there are one quarter as many independent motels as there were in the year John F. Kennedy became president.

Hearthside Village, Bethlehem, N.H. Photo by John Margolies, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

The vintage motel and the tourist court do still exist in New England, though you might have to look for them. Some got run-down and seedy after interstate highways bypassed them. They’ve become a standing joke in popular culture as “no-tell motels” or “the Bates Motel.” The Simpsons featured a motel called the “Sleep-Eazy Motel,” with burned-out lights that read “Sleazy Motel.

“The business marches along a depressing decline from nightly vacation rates to weekly apartment rents,” wrote a motel historian.

Many motels and tourist courts have been torn down to make way for suburban sprawl. But some still do survive as neat, clean, affordable havens along New England’s mountains and beaches.

But how did the ubiquitous roadside motel rise – and fall – so fast?

Tourist Camps

The motel started out as a “tourist camp,” a space in a farmer’s field or along a body of water where motorists could pitch their tents. But from the very beginning, the federal government played a big part in the evolution of the motel.

Teddy Roosevelt got the ball rolling in 1901 when he told Congress he wanted free campgrounds on public lands.

A public campground near Acadia National Park.

His cousin, Franklin, created the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933, which built campgrounds around the country, including two at Acadia National Park. As with other campsites on federal lands, they provided picnic grounds, tent space, restrooms and running water.

“The first public campgrounds in the United States were nothing more than large, dedicated clearings, free of trees, within which to concentrate groups of tourists,” wrote Martin Hogue in A Short History of the Campsite.

Then along came the trailer, and with it a bad reputation. People complained about the loose morals, the littering and the noise that “tin can tourists” brought with them. One postcard described the tin can tourists as having “one shirt and a $20 bill — and they didn’t change either.”

Cabin Camps and Tourist Courts

The Coastal Motel, Wells, Maine. Photo by John Margolies, courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

The cabin camp emerged as America’s highway network grew along with the population. According to Smithsonian Magazine, farmers and other businesspeople would make deals with an oil company, put up a gas pump and built a few shacks. The cabin camps weren’t exactly luxe. Often dingy, they usually lacked running water or electricity.

But other roadside amenities, such as Howard Johnson’s restaurants, began to proliferate, adding to the allure of automobile travel.

Interior of the Howard Johnson’s in Niantic, Conn. Photo by John Margolies,, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

By the 1930s a homier alternative became popular: the cottage court, also known as the tourist court. More expensive than the cabin camps, they had indoor plumbing and electricity. They were mom-and-pop affairs, with a shared lawn and cottages decorated with standard themes.

Motels didn’t always accept all comers. For African-Americans, travel was a challenge. Many carried the Negro Motorists Green Book, a guide to accommodations that didn’t threaten embarrassment or danger.

Rise of the Motel

The Snyders’ largest motel in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Meanwhile, the first so-called motel, or ‘motor hotel,’ opened in 1925 as the Milestone Mo-Tel in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

After World War II, the growing middle class demanded more and more roadside lodging as the federal highway system expanded. People built motor courts at a furious pace. By 1947, there were 22,000 motor courts in the United States.

Bar Harbor

The motels that sprang up in Bar Harbor, Maine, demonstrate the great economic leveling that took place during most of the 19th century. The town changed from a Gilded Age resort for millionaires into a middle-class tourist destination.

After the 1947 Maine fires wiped out many of the Bar Harbor mansions, cottage courts and motels replaced them.

Mount Desert Island Cabins, one unit, Bar Harbor, Maine. Photo by John Margolies, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Throughout the United States, 50,000 motels and motor courts served motoring tourists by 1951.

Golden Age of the Motel

The Little Village Motel on the Berlin Turnpike

The 1950s and 1960s were the golden age of the motel. Mom and pop added color televisions, swimming pools and the Magic Fingers vibrating bed. Neon signs advertised their amenities along strips of road like the Berlin Turnpike in Connecticut, along the Massachusetts coast, on Route 1 in Maine and in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

The industry peaked in 1961, with 61,000 motels in America. Today, there are perhaps a quarter of that. The mom and pop motel fell to motel chains like Holiday Inn and Best Western, then to discount hotels like Hampton Inn and Marriott.

Colonial Park Motel, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Meriden Conn. Photo by John Margolies,

But many still cherish the retro comfort and convenience – not to mention the individuality – of the mom-and-pop motel. Some preservationists want to see them saved. Hartford Courant writer Dennis Barone, for example, argued the Berlin Turnpike should be named an official scenic road.

This story about the New England motel was updated in 2022.

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The Invention of the Fried Clam

On July 3, 1916, Lawrence ‘Chubby’ Woodman invented the fried clam – or at least as we know the revered mollusk today.

It happened on a hot, steamy day in Essex, Mass. Chubby Woodman and his wife Bessie had opened a small concession stand on Main Street two years earlier. On weekends they sold small grocery items, homemade potato chips and clams that Chubby dug from the tidal flats of the Essex River.

That summer day a fisherman named Tarr came by for Chubby’s potato chips. Chubby complained business was slow. Tarr pointed to a bucket of clams and joked that Chubby should try to fry up some clams.

That was Chubby’s eureka moment.

The Fried Clam

He and Bessie shucked the clams, threw lard in the pot and experimented with different batters. When they came up with a version they liked, they asked some locals to taste them.

The Woodmans preferred method was to dip the clams in milk and then in a mixture of finely ground cornmeal and flour before deep frying.

The clams were a hit. Woodman’s sold out of fried clams on July 4 and has been selling them ever since.

Woodman’s of Essex, Mass.

In 1983, a New York Times reporter described Woodman’s as “a rambling barn of a place with wooden picnic tables, no waiters, lots of flies, and all the sophisticated ambiance of a Kiwanis Club cookout in Jersey City.”

Chubby and Bessie wrote important family dates on the back of their wedding certificate. Those dates included their two oldest sons’ birthdays and this: “We fried the first fried clam—in the town of Essex, July 3, 1916.”

Soft-shelled Ipswich clams dug out of muddy flats became the sine qua non of fried clams. Purveyors of the battered bivalve sprang up along the Mollusk Trail –- Route 133 from Rowley through Ipswich to Essex. Hordes come for fried clams In Essex at Woodman’s, run by descendants of Chubby Woodman, J. T. Farnham’s and Essex Seafood, and in Ipswich, the Clam Box.

The Clam Box

What makes the Ipswich clam so special? Cambridge chef Jasper White told the New York Times the soft-shell clams taste richer.

Sadly, Ipswich clams aren’t as plentiful as they used to be, thanks in part to development, pollution and the invasive green crab, which has an appetite for clams as voracious as a summer tourist.

Strips or Bellies?

Howard Johnson’s in Kennebunk, Maine.

Clam shacks spread throughout New England. Not all used Ipswich clams. Cape Codders, for example, use hard shell clams that come from the sandy ocean floor (sometimes causing a grit issue).

Howard Johnson’s brought the fried clam to the masses beyond New England with clam strips, an innovation from another Ipswich clam entrepreneur.

Thomas Soffron, a Greek immigrant and partner in the Soffron Brothers Clam Co., was said to be a picky eater who didn’t like clam bellies. He used only the foot of hard-shell clams, which he marketed as Tender-sweet Fried Clams. Soffron and his three brothers entered into an exclusive deal to provide clam strips for Howard Johnson’s while the restaurant empire was expanding. The Soffron brothers business grew to seven processing plants from Nova Scotia to Maryland to meet Howard Johnson’s demand.

Little Neck, Ipswich, around 1920

The ascent of the clam strip created an ongoing controversy in New England: Bellies or strips? Clam-belly advocates call the strips ‘fried rubber bands’ or ‘nothing but a bar snack.’ Strip advocates call the bellies ‘disgusting.’

Here’s another controversy: Did Chubby Woodman really invent the fried clam? They were listed on an 1865 menu from the Parker House hotel restaurant in Boston.

Presumably, clams then just weren’t the same as the modern fried clam — which, after all, is to New England as barbecue is to the South.

This story about the fried clam was updated in 2023. Flickr image of Woodman’s courtesy Massachusetts Office of Tourism, CC BY-ND 2.0. Flickr image of Clam Box by Ed, CC BY 2.0.

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Clam Chowder the Jacques Pepin (and HoJo’s) Way

In his delightful autobiography, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, Jacques Pepin describes his years working at Howard Johnson’s. He deeply admired Howard Johnson, who he called “charismatic, powerful and soft-spoken,” a straightforward businessman open to new ideas.

Pepin and his wife had dinner with him on his yacht one summer evening They were embarrassed that the chairman of the board served them himself.

Jacques Pepin

“Fried clams and New England clam chowder were popular menu items at Howard Johnson’s, and I soon learned to love them,” wrote Pepin, who now lives in Madison, Conn.

He then made the chowder was in 3,000-gallon amounts, but he reproduced the taste with this recipe – “when a bit of Howard Johnson’s nostalgia creeps in.”

Clam Chowder the Jacques Pepin Way

5 quahog clams or 10 to 12 large cherrystone clams
4 cups water
4 ounces pancetta or lean, cured pork, cut into 1-inch pieces (about ¾ cup)
1 tablespoon good olive oil
1 large onion (about 8 ounces), peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces (1-1/2 cups)
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2-1/4 cups Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch dice (one pound)
1 cup light cream
1 cup milk
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Wash the clams well under cold water, and put them in a saucepan with 2 cups of the water. Bring to a boil (this will take about 5 minutes), and boil gently for 10 minutes. Then drain off and reserve the cooking liquid, remove the clams from their shells, and cut the clams into 1/2 –inch pieces (1-1/2 cups). Put the clam pieces in a bowl, then carefully pour the cooking liquid into another bowl, leaving behind any sediment or dirt. (You should have about 2-1/2 cups of stock.) Set aside the stock and the clams.

Put the pancetta or pork pieces in a large saucepan, and cover with the remaining 2 cups water. Bring to a boil, and boild for 30 seconds. Drain the pancetta, and wash it in a sieve under cold water. Rinse the saucepan, and return the pancetta to the pan with the oil. Place over medium heat, and cook gently, stirring occasionally, for 7 to 8 minutes. Add the onion and garlic, and continue cooking, stirring, for 1 minute. Then add the flour, mix it in well, and cook for 10 seconds. Add the reserved stock and the thyme, and bring to a boil. Then add the potatoes and clams, bring to a boil, cover, reduce the heat to very low, and cook gently for 2 hours.

At serving time, add the cream, milk, and pepper, bring to a boil, and serve. (Note: No salt should be needed because of the clam juice and pancetta, but taste and season to your liking.)

Read more about Howard Johnson’s in our story, Howard Johnson’s: From 2 Restaurants to 1000 and Back. This story was updated in 2021.

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