St. Joseph Auto and Furniture Fabric slipcover sign; St, Joseph, Missouri (1988)
(first posted 8/16/2017) John Margolies was an American photographer who in the 1970s began traveling secondary US highways to document quirky signage and striking roadside eye-catchers. He authored slick, heavy coffee-table books on programmatic architecture and visual essays on novelty subjects like miniature golf courses, movie theaters, Eastern resorts, and road maps. Margolies unflaggingly continued to shoot until his eyes began to fail in the early 2000s. His collection at the Library of Congress goes on into the thousands upon thousands of images. Margolies died in 2016. The accompanying shots are some of those most directly related to the automobile itself.
More Skinny Used Car sign; Santa Fe Avenue, Pueblo, Colorado (1991)
McKay Lincoln Mercury; Westlake & Mercer, Seattle, Washington (1977)
Compton Car Wash; Rosecrans Boulevard, Compton, California (1981)
Earl Scheib Auto Painting sign; Olympic Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California (1991)
Ideal Used Car sign; 1990 South State Street, Salt Lake City, Utah (1981)
Delaware Auto Court sign; State Road, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware (1984)
Betts Truckstop sign; Route 19, Chiefland, Florida (1980)
Champion Springs Service sign, Henderson Street; Fort Worth, Texas (1994)
Weld County Garage (and gas station), Routes 85 & 34; Greeley, Colorado (1980)
Texaco gas pumps; Milford, Illinois (1977)
Yellow Cab Co. sign with clock, South 7th Street; St. Joseph, Missouri (1994)
Uniroyal factory, Telegraph Road; Commerce, California (1977)
25 Cent Car Wash, Main Street & Ocean Park Boulevard; Santa Monica, California (1979)
Lonnie’s Auto Trim sign; Knoxville, Tennessee (1984)
Photos and captions reside in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. Many images are part of the John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive.
Those amazingly vibrant colours and details!
My late best friend’s father in Dallas, Texas always took photos with Kodachrome films for many decades. I thought Kodachrome was too expensive and the slides were cumbersome to handle. However, the colour and detail held up very well after many years, especially from the 1940s and 1950s. They jumped at you, making you feel like you are actually there.
Following his retirement in the late 1970s, he and his wife travelled extensively in North America and Canada with their big Airstream caravan. I enjoyed many nights that his father screened the slides of his travels in North America and Europe from the late 1940s to early 1990s.
After he passed away in 2010, his sole grandson didn’t care for any of photos or Airstream so I have no idea what he did to them.
The photos will show up in 2 possible locations —
1. Yard sale
2. An episode of NPR’s “This American Life.”
No intention of sarcasm …… i’m too much of a hoarder, myself ……
The Santa Monica car wash and liquor store are still there, under different names. I like the Help Wanted Sign in a self-serve car wash. From the looks of it, they needed someone to sweep the debris out of the wash bays. I used to wash my car there in the 70’s, and bumped in to the owner once. She was one horrid woman, but her son was nice. Hopefully he inherited the place from her.
The EARL SCHEIB Painting sign, brought a big smile! “I’LL PAINT ANY CAR $29.95, NO UPS, NO EXTRAS!” in 1971, I opted for the $39.95 “DELUXE” Paint job, I think they gave it a quick coat of primer, or painted the wheels for that price, not sure. made a faded out ’64 Valient look really great! For an extra $29.95, If i recall, you could get a spray on vinyl like roof. This was across the state line in Youngstown Ohio. (I grew up a few miles away in Pa.) Don’t know how long they stayed in business, but I know they where nationwide at one time.
That Earl Scheib sign (or one like it) has been refurbished and is on display at The American Sign Museum in Cincinnati Ohio. When the museum received the sign, it had a couple of bullet holes. They elected to keep the holes. It was fun to spot them as the sign was rotating on its stand.
Here’s your sign! 😉
…Apologies to Bill Engvall
The McKay Lincoln building has been integrated into a newer building, No longer a dealerhip. Sadly, all of that awsome sineage is gone.
From a current Google Street View:
From a historic preservation standpoint, I have mixed feelings about that. It’s good to save a historic facade, but the result can look somewhat silly and doesn’t keep the dignity of the original structure.
A similar project was done here in Virginia with a 1950s-era Chevrolet dealership.
Regardless, the McKay preservation effort seems interesting because apparently the entire facade was deconstructed (into 2,760 pieces) and then put back together during the office building’s construction — according to this article:
https://seattle.curbed.com/2015/6/10/9951232/allen-institute-buildings-historic-terra-cotta-facade-unveiled
Wow, I thought they merely built aroud it. There was an historic church in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh that was demolished and corner of it was left and is attached to another bland modern building. I’m not sure if it wouldn’t have been more respectful just to have torn the whole thing down. It grates me every time I see it.
What you describe about leaving the corner of an old building and building a new building off of it is usually a legal loophole to get around zoning regulations. On an undersized lot, a complete tear down would render the empty lot unbuildable. Leaving a piece of the old building (how much depends on the municipality) qualifies as a major renovation, not as new construction.
> A similar project was done here in Virginia with a 1950s-era Chevrolet dealership.
Yep, Bob Peck’s Chevy City. I remember shopping for a car there. The inside was disappointingly mundane, but the outside with the round facade and white and blue diamond signs/lights was epic. The new large building there retains nothing of the old dealership or signage; rather the new building had an exact recreation of it built into the front section. The old signage likely wasn’t in great shape, and it was easier and cheaper to measure the old parts and build an exact recreation rather than refurbish the old parts and work them into a new building.
I’m surprised the Lincoln-Mercury dealership survived until 2009 at that location. I doubt the signage wasn’t updated to the standardized style by then.
For the record the dealerships were William O McKay Ford and Pacific Lincoln Mercury.
The Moto Guzzi Eldorado parked out front is gone as well.
EDIT: blew it up, that’s a police bike.
Tru dat! (as the kids say.)?
That’s the small scale equivelant to what was done to Soldier Field. Yuck.
Really, really cool pictures. I would put the signage of that Lincoln Mercury dealer as dating from the 1946-48 era. The typefaces for Lincoln and Mercury match those found on the respective cars of that era.
Yep, And the building it’self is rather fancy for such a little 1920’s car dealership, I guseeing that it always was a Lincoln shop.
what would ‘Pacific’ (on one face of the building) refer to?
I think the dealership was actually called Pacific Lincoln-Mercury — it was owned by McKay Ford, which had a separate Ford showroom nearby.
Sounds like it. McKay Ford perhaps bought Pacific Lincoln-Mercury and left the original name intact. There’s car dealerships in Pittsburgh that still bear the original family names even though they’re no longer owned by the same people. It’s like my theory of marketing: If you buy a popular bar or restaurant, Don’t change the name!
Actually it was in the same building. The building spanned most of the city block with a small used car lot on one end.
I assume that means Kenny Ross Chevrolet still exists?
Heading out to the Pittsburgh area next weekend for the first time in about twenty years. MotoAmerica Superbike at Pittsburgh International Raceway.
Not only Kenny Ross Chevrolet, but Kenny Ross GMC,Buick, Cadillac, Ford…..
It might be easier to name cars that Kenny Ross DOESN’T sell! It’s become, Like Cochran’s one of those “automotive groups”
Kenny Ross is almost the “Giant Eagle” of Pittsburgh area car stores!
Or maybe Cochran’s is Giant Eagle and Ross is Shop n Save? Either way, both are huge.
Seattle resident here – I checked a local historian’s website and a comment placed the sign’s erection at 1949.
Here are some photos from the historian’s website. The Ford dealership was located in the South Lake Union neighborhood just north of downtown Seattle. The dealership is blocks away from an old Ford factory. The building served as an auto dealership until around ten years ago. Subarus and Nissans were eventually sold here.
Having been in the sign industry for 34 years now, I love these old signs and the architecture that goes/went along with them. As a designer, they are great. However, on teh production end, they can be nightmarish to repair. But still awesome to run into stuff like this when you’re out traveling.
Maybe it was just a common design language of the era, but that Compton Car Wash is a dead ringer for the car wash used in the movie “Car Wash” 🙂
Well, it is California, maybe it was filmed there??. P.S. the Compton Carwash is still standing and in operation. Unfortunately the “space age” plylon things aren’t there.?
I assume this is the place. What a difference 36 years makes 🙁
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Compton+Car+Wash,+1845+E+Rosecrans+Ave,+Compton,+CA+90221/@33.9035349,-118.2039193,3a,91.9y,69.56h,90.87t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sCiPgivD3c0ooLcZb6noCAQ!2e0!4m5!1m2!2m1!1sCar+wash+Rosecrans+Boulevard,+Compton,+California!3m1!1s0x80c2cc82cda364f9:0xa540d9512ca2343f?hl=en-US
Yep, That’s it. To be fair, given the ups and downs (mostly downs in the 80s-90s) of Compton,CA ,it’s good to see that a business (especially one that’s got to be nearly 60 years old.) is still chugging along.
According to IMDb, the movie location was the Figueroa Car Wash in Westlake, a few blocks from McArthur Park in L.A. The actual address was the corner of Rampart Boulevard and 6th Street. It was demolished during the late 1980s.
Bummer it’s gone. But I guess landmark movie locations are a dime a dozen in So Cal.
“Maybe it was just a common design language of the era”
Yes, there are several open air car wash from the fifties and sixties dotted around southern California. Here’s a street view of one in Carson (near Long Beach- Recently renovated and doing a solid business).
Former Packard dealer in San Antonio, now a dialysis center.
There might be a couple of former customers of the dealership who are now customers of the dialysis center.
Impressive Building! But Mr. Meador picked a hell of a year to put up a new building for a luxury car dealership! Yikes!
This post prompted me to look up the Margolies collection on the Library of Congress site. Among them are numerous pictures of the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach — this one, from 1985, is my favorite.
…And it’s already up on blocks!?
Oh, right. What’s second prize – TWO of them?
A Cimarron.
Nice ! .
In the San Fernando Valley in San Fernando Road was a used car lot called “Miracle Cars” , the matching sign directly below that read ” If It’s a Good Car, it’s a Miracle !” .
I always meant to snap a photo if it, I wonder if they’re still there .
-Nate
My favorite tongue in cheek line on a sign for an auto related business (spotted in the early 80s) was in the tiny town of Wall,PA:
Valley Radiator Service,
The best place in town to take a leak!
There still in business today.
Thanks for the killer post, EE! Great photos and subjects!
Margolies’ photos captivated me, then and now. He was memorializing the “old, Weird America,” full of unique and expressive novelties, an everyday world of wonder. Roadside America was a much richer place then, though already in decline.
For the record, that Weld County Garage sign still stands, behind a more modern auto sales-and-service establishment. And the “More-Skinny” sign still adorns a used lot. You’d think they would have branched out into another branding exercise, such as an exercise club or a diet plan, but Pueblo is a wee bit behind the times.
I just looked at Weld County Garage’s website and they’ve been a Buick dealer since 1908 and a GMC dealer since 1912! They have to be the oldest Buick dealer in continuous operation; they became a Buick dealer before General Motors even came into existence.
Wow. Great selection – torn between Lincoln/Mercury and Uniroyal.
That Uniroyal tire factory is now The Citadel outlet mall. GM used Uniroyal tires almost exclusively at its South Gate assembly plant nearby. So, when GM closed, so did the tire plant.
“Once the largest manufacturing facility under one roof west of the Mississippi, the Samson Tire and Rubber Company plant, opened in May of 1930. Ground was broken on January 23, 1929, only nine months before the stock market crash of October 29, 1929.
Adolph Schleicher started Samson Tire and Rubber Company in 1918 in Compton. He chose “Samson” because it symbolized strength and endurance. For this reason, the building was designed with a Samson and Delilah motif and modeled after the 7th Century B.C. Assyrian palace of King Sargon II’s. Sargon, a Babylonian King, built a 23-acre palace which happened to be the same size as the tire plant. “
No way! I knew it looked familiar. The citadel is a huuuuge place and I wondered why it had the Mediterranean theme going all over it. It seems they started with the factory and expanded on it, using the same design themes.
The Yellow Cab Company sign in St. Joseph is still there as of June 2013. I saw it many times when I lived there from 2001 to 2006.
All of these signs are great and it was wonderful to be familiar with one of them!
That car wash in Compton is representative of what is called Googie architecture, which riffed on a space age theme back in the 1950s. It’s pretty much a California phenomenon.
The most well known example is arguably Johnnie’s coffee shop on Wilshire Blvd, even though it’s been defunct since 1999.