Attractions
Part of collection: John Margolies collection of travel ephemera (20171116-JT)
Dates
- From the Collection: Creation: 1870-2005
- From the Collection: Creation: Majority of material found within 1920s-1960s
Scope and Contents
The attractions series contains 1,195 items, dating from 1912 to 2001, with the majority from the 1920s to the 1970s. Boxes 120-136.
Margolies organized this series in binders, grouped by theme or type of the attraction. We created 28 subseries based on the labels he had assigned to the binders. The order of the groups was created by library staff, keeping items in order the way they were housed in the binders, but assigning an order of the subseries for accessibility.
When Americans first took to the road in their automobiles in the beginning of the twentieth century, shrewd entrepreneurs began to offer essential services, such as gas, food and lodging.
In this explosion of commerce beside the road, there was a new type of establishment which had nothing to do with fulfilling basic needs. The tourist attraction was conceived as a way to divert and amuse travelers along the way.
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 playful to eccentric, from deliciously cartoonish to quasi-psychedelic.
Animals: Fish and Dolphins
Animals: Alligators, Snakes
Animals: Birds
Animals: Zoos, Misc.
Animals: Dinosaurs
Boats and Ducks
Caves
Folk Art
Mystery Spots
Museums
Old Towns
Miniature Villages
Paul Bunyan
Miscellaneous Attractions
Amusement Parks
Dramas
Gift Shops
St. Augustine
Wax Museums
State Guides
South of the Border
Rock City
Drugstores
Ethnic Villages
Observation Towers and Cog Railways
Springs and Gardens
Storylands
Santalands
Related items: Fun along the road : American tourist attractions / John Margolies. Boston : Little, Brown, c1998.
Roadside America : architectural relics from a vanishing past = Architektonisch e Relikte einer vergangenen Epoche = reliques architecturales d'une époque disparque /
John Margolies ; edited by Jim Heimann ; foreword by C. Ford Peatross ; introduction by Phil Patton. Köln, Germany : Taschen, ©2010.
Extent
From the Collection: 45 Linear Feet
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Additional Description
Access Restrictions
This collection is open for research.
Subjects
Repository Details
Repository Details
Part of the Published Collections Repository