An eye for the overlooked
John Margolies made commercial buildings and roadside signs the subjects of a sustained photographic project. The Library of Congress describes a body of work spanning 1969 to 2008: motels, restaurants, filling stations, theaters, miniature golf courses and the signs designed to catch a passing driver’s eye.
His interests stretched beyond celebrated monuments. In this collection, an ordinary corner building can sit beside a restaurant shaped like an animal. Both are evidence of how people made places visible, memorable and their own.
Light, color, and a clear view
In its account of his work, the Library describes Margolies’s preference for early-morning light and clear skies. His color photographs often give a building or sign room to stand on its own. The absence of crowds lets us study surfaces, lettering and proportions that traffic might otherwise carry us past.
A continuing record
Margolies published his photographs in books including The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America, Home Away from Home: Motels in America, and Pump and Circumstance: Glory Days of the Gas Station. The Library of Congress preserves the archive; this independent project offers another way to explore its images and their documented contexts.
A photograph records a moment, not an outcome. The survival, alteration or disappearance of a place requires separate research. We keep that distinction throughout this site.