The photographer/architectural historian [1940-2016] is a FHoF member because of his pluck and determination to get respect for American Roadside kitsch and Outsider designers.
Margolies channeled his anger — acquired on childhood trips during which his dad would never stop the car to let young John look more closely at roadside stands, zippy signs, and miscellaneous bric-a-brac — into a four-decade odyssey of zig-zagging the contiguous states in search of as much Route 66-style fandango as he could find. He put out 12 coffee table books of the findings. What a dream job!
In 1970, before hitting the road full time, Margolies used his platform as a feature writer for Progressive Architecture to write about [and around the same time, organize a gallery exposition of] the work of Morris Lapidus, a giant pink, purple polka-dotted gadfly of hospitality design who threatened to scatter his more serious contemporaries to the outskirts. Imagine the quaint backlash that must have ensued.
Madonna Inn, dining room. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, from Library of Congress archives.
As a parting shot to the New York City modernists and architectural criticism, in 1973 Margolies wrote a piece in P/A about the Madonna Inn — the roadside hotel and Outsider designer experience to beat all. Owner/designer couple, Alex and Phyllis Madonna brought their A-game to the effort and the result [in the original 12-room inn opened in 1958, and expansion to 110 suites in multiple buildings, still in business today] is weird, woolly and wonderful. [If you like its kind of thing, you know.]
Steel’s Fudge, Atlantic City, NJ. Photo by John Margolies, 1985 from Library of Congress archives.
When Fred Trump, father of President Donald Trump demolished Steeplechase Park in Coney Island in Brooklyn, NY in 1960 it was because it was in the way of a real estate scam and attendant theft of public funds — along with displacement and destuction of an immigrant/minority community — both a sad by-product of the main game. When Donald Trump started on Atlantic City two decades later, the business deals were slightly more above board; the racism/class-ism slightly more veiled — and the destruction of lowbrow cultural infrastructure [piers, arcades, old hotels and all else that made the place charming] was just as awful. I was looking at photos of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago recently and noted how much parts of it resemble the Blenheim Hotel, fronting the AC boardwalk from 1902 to 1978, a grand cartoonish palace that should still be standing today instead of Trump’s bankrupt bland tower.
Of course, a lot of people didn’t get it. Many still do not, even though it’s been 40 years since Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown told us all that it’s safe to enter the Funhouse. Shortly after his death in 2016, the Library of Congress assimilated the bulk of Margolies’s photo archives and put them in the public domain — available to pore over [hopefully] and inspire developers and others to break from the corporate mindset and make America weird once more.
Hat n’ Boots gas station, Georgetown neighborhood, Seattle, WA. Photo by John Margolies, 1977 from Library of Congress archives.
Bob’s Java Jive, Tacoma, WA. Photo by John Margolies, 1979 from Library of Congress archives.