Jackson, Mississippi
The Audience Behind the Sign
Jackson’s Alamo carried the history of a Black entertainment community through several addresses.
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Places worth remembering.
A photograph is a beginning. These original stories follow the places in the archive through documented histories, local memories and the record they left behind.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
The room and the car, side by side
Albuquerque’s Aztec Motel preserves evidence of the auto court as a carefully arranged place.
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Saint Louis, Missouri
A Brewery’s Windmill
Bevo Mill attached European imagery to a changing American drinks business.
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Bena, Minnesota
Inside the Catch
A Minnesota fish turned the act of stopping for lunch into an encounter with its own advertisement.
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Amarillo, Texas
The roadside promise of more
The Big Texan made size a theme shared by its name, sign, and meal.
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Tacoma, Washington
A coffee pot with a second vocabulary
Tacoma’s novelty restaurant became a place whose name evokes music as well as coffee.
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Jamestown, North Dakota
A Monument Waiting for a Name
Jamestown’s giant buffalo turned a sculptural superlative into a civic identity.
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Hollywood, California
A train that became a destination
Carney’s turned retired passenger equipment into a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard.
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Saint Ignace, Michigan
Two Giants beneath a View
Castle Rock paired a natural lookout with figures that turned landscape into a remembered stop.
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Carlsbad, New Mexico
A downtown name that reaches upward
Carlsbad’s Cavern Theatre gives a monumental marquee to a local place of entertainment.
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Ipswich, Massachusetts
A Building Shaped like the Takeout
The Clam Box made a disposable food package into a lasting public identity.
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Homestead, Florida
The Weight of One Person’s Idea
Edward Leedskalnin’s sculpture garden turned local stone into an intensely personal built world.
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Mitchell, South Dakota
A Harvest That Became a Building
Mitchell turned agricultural abundance into a public facade and a gathering place.
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Pacific Beach, California
The motel at the edge of the water
Crystal Pier turned the pier itself into an address for an overnight stay.
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Ossineke, Michigan
Prehistory Made by Hand
Paul Domke built an outdoor world where natural-history enthusiasm became roadside sculpture.
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Rapid City, South Dakota
Public Works from Deep Time
Rapid City’s dinosaurs joined Depression-era employment to the ambition of becoming a tourist destination.
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La Puente, California
Drive through the product
At La Puente’s Donut Hole, the space inside the sign becomes the route to the counter.
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DeKalb, Illinois
A Pharaoh on Main Street
DeKalb built a movie palace whose promise of escape began before the ticket was purchased.
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Bozeman, Montana
A family name above Main Street
Bozeman’s Ellen Theatre links a 1919 opening to a later effort to recover a performance space.
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Fargo, North Dakota
A City Name above the Movies
The Fargo Theatre made a downtown entertainment venue into a public introduction to its city.
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Santa Rosa, California
Before a landmark became an image of loss
Margolies’s Santa Rosa photograph offers a view of the round barn before the 2017 fires.
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Trinidad, Colorado
More than a movie on Main Street
Trinidad’s Fox West history includes sound films, family promotions, and a wedding on stage.
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Gaffney, South Carolina
Infrastructure With a Blush
Gaffney made a water-storage problem into a declaration of agricultural identity.
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Hallam, Pennsylvania
The Advertisement You Could Sleep In
Mahlon Haines enlarged a work boot into a house and made hospitality part of the sales pitch.
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Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Pagoda With More Than One Address
A Milwaukee filling station shows how a memorable roof can outlast both a brand and a building.
Read the story ↗![Hat n' Boots gas station (1945), boot restrooms with hat behind them view, 6800 [East] Marginal Way [South], Route 99, Seattle, Washington](/photographs/2017702122-522405261ea4-1024.webp)
Seattle, Washington
The clothes make the gas station
A giant hat and two boots turned a service stop into a Seattle landmark.
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Albuquerque, New Mexico
From watching movement to making it
Albuquerque’s Hiland offers a case study in adapting an entertainment building for dance.
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Margate City, New Jersey
An Elephant Before the Automobile
Lucy turns a seaside sales pitch into a question about what a community chooses to keep.
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Natchez, Mississippi
Hospitality Cast as a Stereotype
An oversized restaurant figure requires a history of racial imagery as well as a history of roadside design.
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Downey, California
When a chain restaurant became a preservation cause
Downey’s McDonald’s reveals how a once-repeated design can become a rare historical resource.
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Saint Paul, Minnesota
A Dining Car without a Departure
Mickey’s turned the look of rail travel into a fixed address for an everyday meal.
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San Antonio, Texas
A screen with a public afterlife
San Antonio’s Mission Drive-In connects movie-going to the later re-creation of a familiar mural.
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Pawtucket, Rhode Island
Built to Look in Motion
Pawtucket’s Modern Diner gave a stationary restaurant the visual energy of a streamlined vehicle.
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Wildwood, New Jersey
A Giant Slide Becomes a Seaside Enterprise
Morey’s began with an attraction spotted far from the New Jersey shore.
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San Luis Obispo, California
A new word at a roadside address
San Luis Obispo’s Motel Inn makes the language of motor travel part of the building’s history.
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Ocean City, New Jersey
A Concert Hall at the Edge of the Beach
Ocean City rebuilt after fire with a place for repeated public listening.
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Los Angeles, California
The campus built from the automobile business
A Los Angeles college carries an unexpected connection to the retail road.
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Deer Lodge, Montana
What the fire spared
Deer Lodge’s Rialto history distinguishes a damaged auditorium from a surviving facade and stage.
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Amboy, California
A name scaled for the desert
Roy’s roadside identity joins a family business to the act of being seen from Route 66.
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Rubidoux, California
The screen before the feature
Rubidoux’s drive-in history includes a railroad, a playground, and the reshaping of the movie image.
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Santa Maria, California
A civic beginning on Broadway
Santa Maria's 1934 city hall marks a public investment during the Depression.
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Winston-Salem, North Carolina
When the Logo Became the Room
A Winston-Salem filling station gave Shell’s familiar emblem a usable interior.
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Dillon, South Carolina
Making a Border into a Destination
A state-line business grew by turning geography into an extended advertising performance.
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Stockton, California
The city as its own monument
Stockton's old civic address brings public architecture into the roadside archive.
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Zillah, Washington
A scandal with a handle
In Zillah, political satire became a place to buy gasoline.
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Wall, South Dakota
The Free Thing That Sold the Stop
Wall Drug made roadside hospitality into a destination large enough to accommodate a dinosaur.
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Anaconda, Montana
What the street does not reveal
Anaconda’s Washoe Theater pairs a restrained exterior with a documented interior of remarkable richness.
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Cave City, Kentucky
A Patent for a Night Away
Wigwam Village No. 2 made an ordinary motor-court stay depend on an extraordinary silhouette.
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Holbrook, Arizona
A motel and a borrowed image
Holbrook’s freestanding rooms expose the difference between a marketing name and a cultural form.
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Willows, California
A grand address for ordinary mail
Willows gives a routine public service an unusually ceremonial setting.
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