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John Margolies

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 2022.

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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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New England Has an Ice Cream Love Affair

New Englanders eat more ice cream than people in any other part of the United States, according to some statistics. The reasons for that ice cream love affair are many.

Ice cream sign in Quechee, Vt. Photo by John Margolies.

Some say New England simply has better ice cream than other places. Some say it has to do with the region’s long tradition of producing good ice cream — better than, say, in the South. But it may also have to do with the Yankee ingenuity that brought more ice cream to more people. And cows.

New England’s long love affair with ice cream burst into full flower with the soda fountain, where it was served, and the automobile, which ushered in a whole new kind of retail commerce.

Ice Cream Love Affair

The soda fountain owes its American existence to a Yale chemistry professor named Benjamin Silliman. In 1806 he bought from England newly invented equipment that impregnated water with carbon dioxide. He called it soda water. Silliman then began selling it in New Haven, Conn. Sales were brisk, so he invented a bigger machine. He took in three partners and opened soda fountains along the East Coast.

Dairy Twirl ice cream sign on the Midway at Salisbury Beach, Mass. Photo by John Margolies, Library of Congress Roadside America collection

The year before Silliman bought his soda equipment, another New Englander began making ice cream possible for people who lived in the tropics. A wealthy Boston Brahmin, Frederic Tudor knew the joys of ice cream and cold drinks in the summer. He began shipping ice around the world. At first people thought him crazy. He proved them wrong by making a fortune.

The automobile also owes much to New England, where the Duryea brothers and Stanley twins pioneered early automobile designs.

HoJo’s

Howard Deering Johnson famously started his empire in 1925 as a small soda fountain. He wanted to improve sales, and he hit upon better ice cream as the answers. So with his own hands he began making ice cream with more butterfat and better ingredients. The results were a hit.

Soon he had to wrestle with the challenge of long lines at his Wollaston store. He began dreaming of an empire. Eventually, Howard Johnson’s grew to a chain of a thousand restaurants – partly on the strength of its 28 flavors of butterfat-rich ice cream.

The Howard Johnson’s restaurant chain has dwindled to one.

Howard Johnson’s, Route 7, Burlington, Vt. Photo by John Margolies, John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Carvel, Friendly’s, Schrafft’s

Others eventually followed Howard Johnson’s success by capitalizing on New England’s ice cream love affair.

Tom Carvel, a Greek immigrant, started his ice cream business by borrowing $15 from his future wife Agnes. With it, he bought an ice cream truck, which had a flat tire one hot day in Hartsdale, N.Y. His ice cream partially melted, but he sold out in two days.

Carvel realized he’d do better with soft ice cream in a stationary location, and so the Carvel frozen custard shop was born. It thrived mostly in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, where it had its headquarters. Later company headquarters moved to Farmington, Conn.

Carvel sign in Darien, Conn. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Carvel ran the business for 60 years, micromanaging the advertising and requiring new franchisees to take an 18-day course at the “Carvel College of Ice Cream Knowledge.” He sold the company in 1989 to an investment firm. Carvel stores have since dwindled to a little over 400 from a peak of 865, and the company emphasizes supermarket sales rather than the standalone shops.

Friendly’s sign by Mike Mozart via Flickr.

The Friendly’s restaurant chain also grew out of New England’s ice cream love affair. Brothers Prestley and Curtis Blake opened an ice cream shop in 1935, in Springfield, Mass. Five years later they opened another, with an expanded menu, in West Springfield. After World War II the company expanded rapidly, luring customers with its signature ice cream sundae. The brothers sold Friendly’s to Hershey Foods in 1979, the first of several transactions. The company has struggled but still survives in the Northeast, Florida and South Carolina.

Another once-successful restaurant chain also has roots in New England. Schrafft’s began as a way for the Boston-based candy store to sell more candy, and the restaurants did well in New York City. Prominent on the menu was “Schrafft’s world-famous ice cream.”

Hoodsie

Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Boston Herald’s indomitable photographer Leslie Jones took this photo of a wrecked H.P. Hood & Sons ice cream wagon in August 1921. The horse ran wild down Beacon Street in Boston, according to the caption.

Here’s another look at a Hood wagon. It’s on display at the Owls Head Museum in Owls Head, Maine.

Hood had already been around for a long time. Harvey Perley Hood started the HP Hood dairy in 1846 in Charlestown, Mass. It took 101 years for Hood to introduce the iconic Hoodsie, a waxed cardboard cup containing half chocolate, half vanilla ice cream. It comes with a wooden spoon, which kids often sucked until they got splinters on their tongues. People who grew up in the Boston area hold a special reverence for the Hoodsie.

Dairy Bars

After the privations of the Great Depression, dairy farmers realized they could make money selling ice cream at roadside stands. With encouragement from the Dairy Council and trade publications like Home Farmer they built dairy bars along the highways.

Charles P. and Fredericka Hayward opened Hayward Farms’ first dairy bar in Milford, N.H., in 1940. Later a second store opened in Nashua. Milk from the couple’s 150 cows was originally used to make ice cream. (Now the cows are gone.) During World War II, Hayward farms sometimes only opened for three days a week because of the sugar scarcity.

Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

The Shady Glen Dairy Farm Ice Cream Bar in Manchester, Conn., started when John and Bernice Rieg decided to diversify their farm. They bought a small cottage in 1948 and built it into an ice cream store with 47 seats. It was so successful they then opened another.

Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

As commercial clutter proliferated along highways, businesses began to rely on eye-catching architecture and signage to attract the motorist’s attention.

Kelbees Ice Cream, East Winthrop, Maine. Photo by John Margolies, Library of Congress Roadside America Collection.

The ice cream stand pictured below probably sprang up along the Berlin Turnpike, one of the great neon strips of the Northeast. The ice cream stand would have had to compete with 20 traffic signals and at least 200 businesses, including diners, hot dog stands, motels, drinking places, bowling alleys, dance halls, petting zoos and 32 gas stations.

Photo courtesy Library of Congress. Photo by Russell Lee of the Farm Security Administration, October 1939.

By the time John Margolies took this photo of the Milk Can in 1978, that kind of vernacular architecture was disappearing. Located on a busy highway, Route 146 in Lincoln, R.I., it

The Milk Can. Photo by John Margolies, John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Premium Ice Cream

New Englanders also claim they started the premium ice cream trend. If you’re thinking Ben and Jerry founded the crazy, you probably don’t live in Somerville, Mass. That’s where Steve Herrell started selling super-premium ice cream in 1973 at Steve’s Ice Cream shop. He created an extreme low-air ice cream and mixed, or “smooshed,” in crumbled candy like Heath Bars. Like most successful ice cream entrepreneurs, he eventually sold the business to a corporation.

Five years after Steve’s Ice Cream opened its doors, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield completed a correspondence course on making ice cream. They then opened a Ben & Jerry’s store in Burlington, Vt.

You pretty much know the rest.

This story was updated in 2022. Images: Hood Wagon By NellsWiki (talk) – I (NellsWiki (talk)) created this work entirely by myself., CC BY 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27143083. Friendly’s sign by Mike Mozart via Flickr CC by 2.0.

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