By Peter Glaser

Adventures in an automobile are a lot of fun: drive-in restaurants and theaters, streets of neon, and drive-through trees come to mind. And then there are magnetic or gravity hills—natural ‘road’ wonders – the most famous of which is in Moncton, New Brunswick (the geographic center of the Maritime Provinces).

In 1933, a correspondent for the Saint John, New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal wrote:

There is a hill near Moncton, up which they say water will flow. If you stop your car at the foot of the hill, shut off your engine, put the gears in neutral, and take off the brakes—it will back up the hill!

In the horse and wagon days, locals used to talk about that ‘funny place’ on a backroad heading out of Moncton where horses tended to labor going down a hill and then tire as they continued up what appeared to be only a gradual incline. With the automobile’s arrival, it was more of the same: drivers were puzzled why they had to shift into low gear when traveling ‘down’ this hill.

The 1933 article in the Telegraph-Journal brought attention to ‘the hill’ and no doubt gave rise to the area’s first roadside entrepreneur. In June of that year, Muriel Lutes opened a small wayside stand selling ice cream, refreshments, and souvenirs at ‘the top’ of what she had named Magnetic Hill. In short order, the business expanded to include a filling station, gift shop, restaurant, and small inn. By 1956, an enlarged two-story gift shop—the largest in eastern Canada—was in operation, and in 1960, a modern motel replaced the old inn.

The “magnet” was growing more and more powerful, drawing people worldwide to ‘try the hill’ and marvel over its strange properties. Magnetic Hill evidently bemused engineers and healed the sick – but at all times entertained. In the 1950s, a reporter for the New York Sun described the experience:

The visitor … drives out to the top of the hill, stops his car, and looks down the straight road ahead. Perhaps a scant quarter of a mile away is a big white sign on one side of the road and a white pole on the other. It is, your eyes tell you, unquestionably the bottom of a very definite grade. It goes down, down at least ten to twenty feet in that four hundred odd yards—and from that point, just as obviously, climbs again.

So, you climb in your car. The road is smooth gravel with a hard base, offering little resistance to tires. You release the brake, but you don’t coast. Needs a bit of a start, you decide, and shift into low only to find that it takes a bit of power to drive down that hill to the white sign and post. At the foot of the hill, you get out to look back. Yes, sir. That is an upgrade. But you obey the sign on the white board—stop your motor, put the gear in neutral and release all brakes. The car moves—backward! Upgrade! It continues to move. You coast backward uphill to your starting point, where the ‘magnetism’ is pulling you right along at about ten or fifteen miles an hour.

There is, of course, nothing magnetic about the hill—it is simply a very impressive optical illusion. The same reporter added:

No one has completely solved the puzzle. It is probably due to several things—the lay of the surrounding land, the contour of the road margins, the angle of the grade on the far side, which rises sharply from the apparent ‘bottom’ of the ‘magnetic’ portion of the hill, and perhaps other less obvious factors.

There have been plenty of interesting reactions to the phenomenon over the years. For example, in July 1938, an American tourist related on a postcard the experience of walking the hill after driving it: “I felt a drawn sensation walking down. Walking back, we could move more easily just as if a tension had been loosened.”

In the 1950s, an elderly gentleman, obviously of means, had taken one trip in his limousine, looked back ‘down’ the hill, turned to his chauffeur, and said, “Henry, let’s get out of here, the devils in it!” Perhaps most amusingly, another attendee, apparently a man of science, after trying the hill, got out of his car, shook his head, and said, “I haven’t had a drink today, but this calls for a special prescription,” upon which he opened his kit and passed the bottle.

In the 1950s, Magnetic Hill was Canada’s third most popular tourist destination—after Niagara Falls and Banff National Park. The province, capitalizing on the volume of visitors, established a zoo adjacent to the attraction in 1953.

In 1974, the business was sold to Stan Steeves, a Moncton businessman who owned an adjacent golf course (where those who “hook, sky, slice, smother, or otherwise scuff a shot” could conveniently blame that nearby mysterious hill for their poor game). Since then, Magnetic Hill has become a tourist mecca. The accumulation of attractions includes a waterpark, amusement park, four miniature golf courses, and a game zone—in short, the real magnetism of the place.

On the topic of natural wonders, visitors to New Brunswick would be remiss not to take in the nearby Bay of Fundy, which experiences the largest tidal variations in the world. The tidal bore on the Petitcodiac River in Moncton is created when the incoming tide pushes up against the river’s current. The result is a single broad wave that sweeps upstream, reaching heights of up to three feet.

Similarly, the Reversing Falls Rapids on the Saint John River in Saint John are created when high tide collides in a rocky gorge section of the river over a submerged natural dam, reversing the flow and producing a series of whirlpools, waves, and white-water rapids. At low tide, the full flow of the river rolls and swirls through the narrow gorge (and over the same underwater dam) as it approaches the Bay of Fundy. In New Brunswick, both natural and roadside wonders abound!

This article originally appeared in the SCA Journal, Spring 2024, Vol. 42, No. 1. The SCA Journal is a semi-annual publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.

[Apologies for the re-send, but there was a typo we felt we had to correct.]

Peter Richards, 80, recently passed away at his home in Maine. He was described in his obituary as a “lifelong, beloved teacher, an enthusiastic prankster, and a creative, generous soul who counted ‘prospecting for gold in Greenland’ and ‘playing banjo for an X-rated movie soundtrack’ among his favorite odd achievements.”

“I knew Peter from the very start of the SCA in 1977; he was an enthusiastic supporter and involved in all the early meetings,” recalls Arthur Krim, another of the SCA’s founders. “I believe he tried to preserve the signage in Boston’s Combat Zone.” This was an adult entertainment district, full of salacious street advertisements along Washington Street in downtown, which has since been redeveloped.

Chester Liebs, the SCA’s founder, said he had not seen Peter for a very long time. “However, I remember him from the organization’s early years as talented, ever positive, kind, and highly effective.”

The obituary noted that Peter believed everyday objects have fascinating stories, a belief he demonstrated by collecting sand from around the world, airline barf bags, air fresheners, and McDonald’s placemats. “His passion for roadside artifacts and stories — diners, gas stations, fast-food emporia, and signage — led him to become a founding member of the SCA.”

“Unsurprisingly, Peter Richards and I bonded over diners in the early 1970s when we were both living in the Boston area,” Richard Gutman says. “We collaborated on a feature article in 1974 for the Sunday New York Times Travel Section: ‘A Guide to Dining Out . . . Way Out’, which put a spotlight on 10 of our favorite diners.”

Gutman adds that he participated in one of Peter’s classroom projects that measured the speed of spring’s advance along the U.S. Eastern seaboard. “The class sent postcards to postmasters within five miles of Route 1 from Florida to Maine, requesting a return postcard indicating the date of the first daffodil bloom. The class used the results to determine that the arrival of spring averaged 50 miles per day—about what a person could walk.”

He then zeroed in on one of Peter’s strengths as an educator. “It was his ability to open people’s eyes to the commonplace, whether roadside architecture or the significance of blooming daffodils.”

Larry Cultrera recalls meeting Peter at the SCA’s landmark Detroit conference at the Henry Ford Museum in 1988. Their only other encounter was a serendipitous event at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in 2003. “I was wearing my Agawam Diner t-shirt and a guy, with a young child, walks up to me and says, ‘The Agawam Diner is my favorite diner!’ I looked at him and said, well of course, you are Peter Ames Richards!” Cultrera adds that Peter was one of the nicest people he ever met.

In Peter’s final months, he gave the SCA one last gift, reaching out for help finding good homes for his collectibles and an amazing archive of commercial archaeology slides. SCA board member Frank Brusca volunteered to catalog the collection, which is now available on the SCA’s website.

View The Peter Richards Roadside Collection.

The obituary concluded by saying, “Peter will be deeply missed by his wife of 45 years, Kelly Frick Richards; his children, Maisie, Kennesaw, and Austin…and all the lucky kids who followed him like the Pied Piper into the adventures of learning.”

This article originally appeared in SCA Road Notes, Spring 2026, Vol. 34, No. 1. SCA Road Notes, informally known as SCA News, is a quarterly publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology. Back issues are available for download.

Recorded Wednesday, March 11, 2026

Author/publisher/artist Doug Kirby provides a mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes glimpse of 40+ years decoding the world of offbeat roadside attractions in books, periodicals, websites and mobile apps. His weird set of talents, and those of his collaborators on the Roadside America Project, pioneered a spirit and methodology to love (and poke fun at) unique attractions.

Join us for a fascinating side trip on the borders of good taste, through the state of confusion — where giant statues spar for attention, tourist traps grip with spring-loaded merch jaws, and everyone sends “Wish You Were Here” postcards to their pals back home. Quirky, oddball, wacky, weird — the fever dream of a nation.

Calling all penny hoarders: get out your mason jars and piggy banks! The US Mint announced that the last penny was struck in November 2025. Now is the time to spread that wealth and put those copper cuties back in circulation so that collectors everywhere can make the most accessible souvenir of all time. Call them what you will – pressed, flattened, smashed, smooshed, squished, or even squashed, if you must –these pocket-sized memories are the best use of the now-obsolete currency.

Join Christine Henry and Pete Morelewicz, by day a historic preservation professor and a graphic artist, as they discuss the history of squished pennies, their collaborative art project, the Squished Penny Museum (1997-2007), and the future of squishing. Spoiler alert – if you don’t already have a collection, you will want to start one by the end of this Zoom!

Will Durham is a Reno native and preservationist of vintage neon signs throughout Nevada and beyond. Will is the creative force behind The Light Circus Neon Museum, and spearheaded a successful legislative campaign to make neon the “official element of the State of Nevada.”

Reno and Nevada’s history is unique, and much of it has been expressed through the bold, beautiful glow of neon. The Light Circus will preserve the city’s past, celebrating the craftsmanship, design, and visual identity that shaped the postwar boom era.

Join Will as he shares his vision to create a new museum with his vast collection of Reno’s best neon signs in downtown Reno.

Casa Grande’s downtown park is a gas — neon gas, specifically. Its elements flicker to life at dusk, creating a buzz that lasts until 11 p.m. Whether an evocative name like Hotel Sacaton or a more pedestrian moniker like Goddard Shoes, the neon signs glow in the Arizona darkness as if drawn with a magical luminous pen.

Burning brightly in the night, these signs, which once promoted Casa Grande businesses, have found a second career as objets d’art in the public space.

The featured signs, using noble gases such as neon and argon for illumination, are primarily products of the post-World War II economic boom. Their designs, which capture the period’s unbridled optimism, have received acclaim as American folk art. But when their mom-and-pop businesses closed, these orphaned signs lost their purpose and almost their existence. Casa Grande, not wanting to lose the sense of place created by these local landmarks, set out to preserve them in a vintage sign park. But it wasn’t an easy task to get the lights turned on.

Casa Grande’s commercial landscape, encountered by motorists in the Roaring ’20s, included signs advertising the goods of local merchants as well as those promoting gas, food, and lodging, primarily on Arizona Highway 84. The road was a shortcut between Tucson and Gila Bend for travelers on U.S. Highway 80, a cross-country thoroughfare with more traffic than Route 66.

Memorable signs from this pre-interstate era still grace the city’s roadside, including those advertising the Boots n’ Saddle Motel, Cotton’s Wonder Bar, and the Se-Tay Motel. Sophia’s Restaurant is long defunct but still has its unique, though unlit, neon fountain sign. Many signs vanished over the years, but some were saved and donated to local organizations.

Amidst this darkening of the city’s heritage, a ray of light appeared from an unlikely source. In 2016, Marge Jantz, an energetic Scottsdale transplant and SCA member with swirls of purple running through her silver hair, believed that relit historic signs would be a catalyst for revitalizing the city’s downtown.

“I have an extravagant fondness for the color and flash of neon signs,” she confesses. As the then-chairwoman of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission (HPC), Jantz led efforts to secure a grant for a Historic Resource Sign Survey and to partner with Casa Grande Main Street to raise funds for the restoration of the collected orphaned signs. Most importantly, she used her effervescent personality to cajole a rent-free space downtown for the sign park.

The commission’s initial project was the 1940s-era Sunset Court sign. The HPC rescued it in 2013 and, four years later, mounted the refurbished sign on the side of the Western Trading Post building downtown. The Sunset Court sign was relit and became part of a Highway 84 History Trail mural featuring historic local landmarks.

Jantz’s initial efforts also met a disappointing loss: the Silver Bullet Cocktails sign that had advertised the eponymous bar on Arizona Route 387 since 1956. The pole sign had a neon cocktail glass above its name and a giant arrow with chaser lights below it.

In 2016, with the building in foreclosure, a sign picker came through town. “The local branch bank manager sold the sign with no thought of preserving our local sign history or supporting the city’s Historic Preservation Commission,” Jantz says. Things then took a strange turn with the sign, resulting in a flicker of hope for its return.

A bar owner in Ankeny, Iowa, had paid $2,000 for the Silver Bullet sign and an additional $1,500 for it to be packaged and delivered to a sign company in Grand Island, Nebraska, for refurbishment. But the sign failed to arrive at its intended destination. The shippers claimed delays due to mechanical breakdowns and illness until communication ceased for a good reason: they had pawned the sign for $2,100 in Phoenix.

An unsuspecting person bought the Silver Bullet sign at the pawn shop and offered it on Craigslist for $2,500. “A friend of mine saw the posting, notified me, and word was passed to the Iowa owner,” Jantz says. Law enforcement located the shippers and charged them with theft, then went undercover as prospective buyers and confiscated the Silver Bullet neon sign. Three months later, the sign finally made it to Nebraska for restoration and was subsequently displayed at the Fletcher Kitchen & Bar in Ankeny. The owner said that if the restaurant ever closed, he would return the sign. The Fletcher closed in 2022; no word has been received on whether the sign will be returned to Casa Grande.

Despite the loss of the bar sign, the restored Sunset Court sign raised public awareness about the city’s historic resources. In 2017, Casa Grande Main Street entered its proposed vintage sign park in the Partners in Preservation: Vote Your Main Street competition sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “I think people were both in awe and disbelief that our small community could compete in a nationwide contest with such high stakes,” Jantz says. Casa Grande won a $144,000 grant, coming in second, ahead of 23 other projects, including those in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and Salt Lake City.

Jantz expanded the sign park’s collection to 14 signs. The Kramer family, which owns the adjacent Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc., lent its property for the park, which links downtown with the Arts & Culture District. Cook & Company Signmakers in Tucson, owned by Jude and Monica Cook, who also founded the Ignite Sign Art Museum, installed all the signs. They restored nine and manufactured three additional ones. Graham’s Neon in Mesa restored two others. Jantz is expanding the park to include a windmill and metal art, to celebrate the city’s agricultural history. For her extraordinary efforts, Jantz was recently the recipient of the Governor’s Heritage Preservation Honor for Lifetime Achievement. She’s part of a rare daily double, having been part of the team that was selected for the same honor for Casa Grande’s Neon Sign Park in 2020.

Casa Grande’s Neon Sign Park is part of a nationwide movement to display orphaned signs. “This is great for nostalgic locals and design-loving tourists,” says Debra Jane Seltzer, former SCA columnist. “It keeps the signs in their outdoor element, where they were meant to be seen.”

Sign parks are considered a last resort in preservation, as business owners are encouraged to leave their signs on-site when possible. “Without vintage signs, the entire country will be characterless, with nothing but chain stores from coast to coast,” Seltzer says. “When we travel, there will be no regionalism, no fun, no design, and nothing to photograph.”

Tod Swormstedt, founder of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, says several public displays of vintage neon signs are popping up across the U.S. and calls out Jantz for accomplishing the near-impossible. “Casa Grande is certainly one of those little gems to see and experience,” he says. But what I think is perhaps even more of an accomplishment is having created this on someone else’s property. I can only imagine the negotiations, legal issues, and liability concerns that must have been experienced. I’m sure the public can’t fathom the logistics involved, but they can surely enjoy it.”

Swormstedt notes that the evolution of vintage signs from marketing tools to an integral part of a city’s aesthetic is driven by a powerful yet unseen factor. “I think the common thread that runs through preserving vintage signs is emotional,” he says. Signs are a proverbial walk down memory lane, and they almost always evoke fond memories.

Casa Grande has capitalized on this sentiment and is letting the good times glow.

This article originally appeared in the SCA Journal, Fall 2025, Vol. 43, No. 2. The SCA Journal is a semi-annual publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.

By Kevin Patrick

Download Fall 2025 SCA Journal

I went searching for the ghost of Fort Dells and was surprised to find how much of it continued to linger in the weedy, overlooked margins of Wisconsin Dells. Bits of the old Western-themed amusement park survived from a time before the Dells remade itself into the Midwest’s waterpark mecca. Waterparks seem to be a complementary diversion to the scenic wonderland of sandstone cliffs and canyon-like gulches the Wisconsin River has carved at the edge of both the North Woods and the hilly Driftless Area.

…

Waterpark Wisconsin Dells moved beyond mid-20^th-century America’s fascination with the mythology of the Old West in the 1980s, leaving Fort Dells marooned. Marginalized by changing times and demographics, the frontage part of the property was redeveloped for a McDonald’s and a Walgreens, but the back part was left for nature to redevelop. That’s where the ghost of Fort Dells lingers.

Tall grass, nettles, poison ivy, thorny bushes, honeysuckle, birches, and maple trees have recolonized the Hulburt Creek floodplain with an undulating mantle of greenery, through which peak rectilinear ruins, bits of paving, courses of foundation stone, and scattered litter are visible. At the edge of the creek, wooden posts lined a sandstone cliff that harbored the dark recesses of a fabricated cave holed through the steep-sided promontory. An old iron safe and its detached door lay toppled on the ground along with a moss-covered shoe. Two sets of red wagon wheels rested on a weedy patch of pavement.

There is a romance to ruins that mirrors the arc of life from inception to the apogee of achievement, and then the inevitable fade to decay. The apogee of achievement for this nature-reclaimed wreckage was once a Dells anchor attraction that drew more than a quarter of a million visitors in its peak year of 1972.

…

When I bushwacked my way onto the overgrown footprint of Fort Dells, I expected to find nothing. To my surprise, the floodplain nature of the site and the small size of the undeveloped parcel worked in favor of saving what ruins remain. Foundation stones border the waterless channel that once floated the Robert E. Lee steamboat. A weedy terrace between the channel and the sandstone bluff carried the Kilbourn & Western train to its recurring destiny with Black Bart.

The train itself was saved, restored, and continues to carry Wisconsin Dells tourists at Timbavati Wildlife Park. The Big Bonanza Mine survives as a cave strewn with old park litter, including an iron safe abandoned just outside the mine’s dark recesses.

A pair of wagon wheels stand in the shade of maple trees that have partially reclaimed the Children’s Farm. Cleaned up and re-landscaped, the site has the potential to become a different kind of passive park, a history walk through a garden that reclaims the lingering ghost of Fort Dells.

This article appears in full in the SCA Journal, Fall 2025, Vol. 43, No. 2. The SCA Journal is a semi-annual publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.

The 1964–65 fair’s theme, “Peace Through Understanding,” focused on achieving world peace through global interdependence. Exhibits featured 80 nations, 24 states, and 45 corporations. After the fair closed, most pavilions were demolished. Some pavilions, such as those of the United States, DuPont, and Greyhound, waited for years to be repurposed but were eventually razed.

Some leftovers from the 1939–1940 fair were reused at the 1964–1965 fair and are still in use, including pathways, roads, two artificial lakes, Googie-style canopies that form both fairs’ main entrances, and walkways connecting transportation hubs.

Remnants existing from the 1964–1965 fair include drinking fountains, benches, street markers, entrance pillars, garden markers, and a General Motors retaining wall. The Parks Department’s administrative offices in the Olmsted Center were once the headquarters for Robert Moses and his staff.

Structures, such as the five sculptures still on-site, evoked the fair’s futuristic themes, where modernism meets the Space Age. The world’s largest sculpture of Earth, the Unisphere, sponsored by U. S. Steel, symbolized the fair and today represents the park and borough of Queens. Designed by Gilmore Clarke, it is located where the previous fair’s Perisphere stood. It is the only structure from two world fairs that New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission deemed landmark-worthy.

Donald De Lue’s impressive sculpture, Rocket Thrower, reaches for the stars, while Marshall Fredericks’ Freedom of the Human Spirit inspires earthly liberation. Forms in Transit by Theodore Roszak is a rocket in motion, whereas Free Form by Jose De Rivera is a steel curve pouncing like an eagle.

The fair featured nine spectacular fountains. “Fountains of the Fair’s” recently renovated mist garden sprays visitors with cooling water as it did six decades ago. The restored “Fountain of the Continents” surrounding the Unisphere operated annually at the U.S. Open until 2022. The “Astral Fountain” has been converted into a skateboard park. The “Fountain of the Planets,” once the largest fountain in the world, presented light shows and fireworks visible from miles away to residents, including me. Today, it sits abandoned and filled with garbage. All that remains of the neglected “Fountain of Progress North” and “Fountain of Progress South” are dried-up ruins.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gloria R. Nash grew up a block from a Howard Johnson’s, known as the “Queen of the Chain” in Rego Park, near the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair. That sparked her lifelong passion for writing and photographing mid-century styles. While living in California and Las Vegas, her newsletter, For Here or To Go, attracted collectors nationwide. Returning to Manhattan, she learned website construction to create collectibles sites. Commemorating the 60th and 85th anniversaries in 2024 of the fairs, she wrote, photographed, and published Looking Back at the Future: Photographing Vintage Leftovers of New York’s World’s Fairs. She is currently working on Part 2 of this pictorial series.

1964-65 New York World’s Fair Post Office Pavilion poster at Queens Museum, 2023.

There’s more! To read the rest of this article, SCA members are invited to log in. Not a member? We invite you to join. This article originally appeared in the SCA Journal, Fall 2025, Vol. 43, No. 2. The SCA Journal is a semi-annual publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.

In the summer of 2022, a group of sign painters joined together to save a ghost sign in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago before the building was demolished. Under the siding, the 100-year-old building revealed two signs in almost perfect condition, one being a 1930s Wards Bread Sign painted by “Briggs Sign Co.”

This ghost sign preservation effort led to the rediscovery of a large collection of original sign sketches by Beverly Sign Co., the company Jack Briggs of Briggs Sign Co. would go on to start after painting that exact bread sign several years previously.

Join Andrew and Kelsey McClellan, the Chicago sign painters who operate Heart & Bone Signs, as they discuss their sign preservation efforts as well as their journey into self-publishing the book, The Golden Era of Sign Design.

More SCA Zoom Recordings

2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the WORLD’S FIRST MOTEL. Join Heather David, author of Motel California, as we take a virtual road trip and celebrate sparkling blue pools, flashing neon signs, automatic ice machines, and bleached-white towels.

More SCA Zoom Recordings

I had never heard of Grapevine, Texas, until my wife asked if I wanted to tag along to a conference she attended there last year. A suburban city situated between Dallas and Fort Worth, Grapevine was a revelation.

Settled in the 1840s and 1850s by a small group of pioneers, the initial attraction was land ownership in the area that offered rich soil and local springs—ingredients that yielded excellent harvests and future prosperity. Taking its name from the wild mustang grapes so abundant in the region (not to mention the springs and prairie of the same name), the town began to thrive with the arrival of the Cotton Belt Railroad in 1888. Establishing itself as an agricultural trade center servicing the greater region, a formidable main street of dignified brick buildings emerged toward the end of the 19th and the first two decades of the 20th century.

In the 1970s, with urbanization encroaching on a quaint prairie downtown, local historians stepped up to safeguard Grapevine’s wealth of heritage. In 1984, Grapevine became part of the Texas Main Street Program to preserve and revitalize its central thoroughfare. Moving forward, in 1991, the city adopted a historic preservation ordinance with the goal of protecting the city’s architectural heritage. In 1992, Grapevine’s downtown Main Street core was listed as a National Register Historic District.

Due to these efforts, Grapevine today has a charming thoroughfare, replete with restored, revitalized, and—in some cases—rebuilt (where losses had occurred) commercial structures.

1: Willhoite’s Restaurant

How many restaurants can boast of having a 1927 Model T perched above a buffet station on an original hydraulic lift? Willhoite’s Restaurant can! Constructed in 1913, this building was initially a department store and then briefly a silent movie theater. In 1919, it was transformed into the Willhoite Garage, the first full-service automotive station in Grapevine. Named after co-owner Andrew Willhoite (Bart Starr was his partner in the enterprise), they ran the operation until 1936, when Willhoite’s son, Ted, took over the business. When Ted retired in 1975, the building was used as a furniture warehouse for five years, at which point it was purchased by Phil Parker and was renovated into Willhoite’s Restaurant and Galleria. The interior space was shared with retail shops on both the lower and upper levels until the restaurant’s success ultimately took over the entire building.

Phil and his son, Eric, have been faithful to the structure’s history, preserving the name and restoring the building as authentically as possible. Many features of the auto shop’s past have been retained, including the exposed brick walls and original ceiling, a gas pump outside the front entrance, historical signs, and memorabilia—not to mention the Model T and hydraulic lift.

2: City Drug Store

The Texas General Store began as the Olympia Confectionery, which also played silent films in its early days. In 1914, C.E. “Pie” Stewart purchased the building and installed a soda fountain as an additional revenue source. Roy Chambers took over the business in the late 1940s, renaming it City Drug, the name of which is tastefully preserved in the exterior signage …

To read the rest of this article, members are invited to log in to the SCA website. Not a member? We invite you to join. This article originally appeared in SCA Road Notes, Fall 2025, Vol. 33, No. 3. SCA Road Notes, informally known as SCA News, is a quarterly publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.

Join Steven Spiegel, an Executive Story Lead for Walt Disney Imagineering, as he details the history of neon in the Disney theme parks around the world. Learn when neon first appeared in Disney parks, and how the medium influenced park architecture, visitor experience, and overall storytelling.

Steven began his career with the Walt Disney Company in 1990 and has had the pleasure of writing such diverse projects as: Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, Epcot; Reflections of China (CircleVision film), Epcot; Turtle Talk with Crush, Epcot; Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios; The Iron Man Experience, Hong Kong Disneyland; Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, California Adventure; and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Epcot. Steve is also a founding member of Signs United, an international community of vintage sign hunters, enthusiasts, and preservationists. He is currently on the Board of Directors for both The Museum of Neon Art and the Society for Commercial Archeology.

More SCA Zoom Recordings

The Great American Retro Roadtrip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana is Rolando Pujol’s coast-to-coast celebration of the nostalgic pleasures of America’s vintage signs, quirky roadside attractions, and offbeat fast-food relics.

Rolando is an executive producer for WABC-TV Eyewitness News in New York, where he oversees the station’s original content and helps chart its digital future. Still, when he’s not toiling in the newsroom, he’s usually trawling for history along the American roadside. – and sharing his work on social media and his Substack.

Armed with a camera and a fondness for history, Rolando has spent many years traveling the country telling the stories, in words and pictures, of the places Americans grew up with: mom-and-pop diners, corner candy stores, the burger stands, and ice cream parlors for his popular The Retrologist and social media account. The Great American Retro Road Trip is an adventure into the heart of a uniquely American strain of ingenuity and creativity, told in 320 pages and hundreds of photos.

In his presentation, Rolando shares how his new book came about and how he approached putting it together, taking us through the book and sharing some of his favorite photos and stories from each of its chapters.

More SCA Zoom Recordings

As you may have noticed, the Society for Commercial Archeology is now publishing select content from our SCA Journal and SCA Road Notes on Substack and sharing our posts via email.

Substack is a new way for us to share content we post to our website and, we hope, a way for “fellow travelers” not familiar with the SCA to discover and join our organization.

While some Substacks ask for a subscription fee, the SCA Substack is free.

If you’re an SCA member but do not wish to receive our Substack emails, you can click “unsubscribe” below. Unsubscribing will not affect your SCA membership.

We hope you enjoy receiving the great articles we post to our website in your email inbox.

Happy trails!

Marcia Bricker Halperin, a lifelong Brooklynite, has been photographing the character and landscape of New York City since the 1970s. Her debut book of photographs, Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow’s Cafeteria, was published by Cornell University Press in the Spring of 2023.

Step back into the nostalgia and grit of 1970s New York City through poignant black-and-white photographs of the self-service restaurants that provided nourishment in more ways than just food for a generation. Halperin’s images include portraits of customers and workers. Other photographs capture the mid-century atmosphere of the eateries’ graceful and ultra-modernist interiors. Gossip, lipstick, powder puffs, cigars, kerchiefs, fedoras, and leopard pattern coats—all the cafeteria denizens’ accoutrements for dining on gefilte fish, kasha varnishkes, rice pudding, or blintzes are here.

Visit the Society for Commercial Archeology for more videos … and tons of other roadside content. And while you are there, consider becoming a member!

Kevin Patrick leads the Society for Commercial Archeology’s shuffle off to BUFFALO & the AMERICAN SIDE of NIAGARA FALLS.

SCA on the road again; on to Buffalo to see the Swan Street Diner, a 1937 Sterling made by the J. B. Judkins Company of Merrimac, Massachusetts, that operated as the Newark Diner in Newark, N.Y. until being restored and opened in Larkinville in 2017.

Buffalo’s Larkinville complex of industrial buildings and warehouses was built by the Larkin Soap Company beginning in 1875. Larkin expanded into a catalog mail-order company offering over 900 household products. Frank Lloyd Wright completed Larkin’s Administration Building in 1904. Weakened by the Great Depression, the Larkin Company was broken up. Wright’s abandoned Administration Building was taken over by the city for back taxes and sold to the Western Trading Company who demolished it in 1950. All that remains are two brick corner piers that anchored a fence bordering the site.

The Buffalo Transportation Pierce Arrow Museum highlights Buffalo’s role as an early auto manufacturing city hosting long-gone brands like Buffalo Electric Vehicle, Thomas, and the handcrafted, luxury car, Pierce Arrow. From 1901 until the Depression shut the company down in 1938, Pierce Arrows were built at the company’s Elmwood Avenue plant on Buffalo’s Northside. Among the antique cars, Greg and Beth make friends with a giant anthropomorphic hot dog..

The Pierce Arrow Museum’s architectural centerpiece is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed gas station the museum built from original plans in 2014. The Larkin Company commissioned Wright to design a gas station for the Buffalo corner of Michigan Avenue and Cherry Street that was never built (largely due to it being twice as expensive to construct as the average gas station). Tanks in the station’s copper roof contained the gasoline designed to be gravity fed into automobiles.

The Playboy Motor Car Company was a short-lived Buffalo manufacturer selling “second cars” to postwar families from 1947 to 1951. Two years after Playboy went bankrupt, Chicago magazine writer Hugh Hefner was trying to conjure a name for his new magazine. His partner Eldon Sellers suggested the name of the Buffalo car manufacturer that had employed his mother. .

Among Buffalo’s architectural treasures is Louis Sullivan’s Guarantee/Prudential Building completed in 1896 and covered from base to capital in red terra cotta tiles laced with Sullivans detailed decorative graphics.

With its iconic Streamline Moderne profile, Buffalo’s 1941 William Arrasmith Greyhound Bus Station survives in the Main Street Theater District as the Alleyway Theatre.

Large 360-degree cyclorama paintings -like ‘The Battle of Gettysburg’ painted by Paul Philippoteaux in 1883- were a popular form of non-motion picture entertainment in the post-Civil War era. The round building constructed to house the Buffalo Cyclorama in 1888 survives as an office building at Pearl and Edwards streets. ‘Jerusalem on the Day of Crucifixion’ was displayed here followed by the ‘Battle of Missionary Ridge,’ which was also shown at Buffalo’s 1901 Pan-American Exposition.

BUFFALO’S MAIN STREET AUTO ROW. Between 1900 and World War II, every city in America developed an automobile row along one of the main streets radiating from downtown. Typically proximate to the upscale neighborhoods that housed their market base, auto rows contained gas stations, auto parts plants and stores, tire and battery dealerships, service and storage garages, and auto showrooms, especially for luxury marques. Buffalo’s prewar automobile row was on Main Street northward from downtown where a John Graham designed Ford assembly was built in 1915 followed by Louis Kahn’s Packard showroom and garage. G. Martin Wolfe designed Charles Monroe’s Marmon and Velie showroom in 1920 that operated as a Ford sales and service garage between 1931 and 1936. Pierce Arrow’s Art Deco showroom was built at Main Street and Jewett Parkway in 1926.

Pierce Arrow’s Main Street showroom was only two blocks away from Larkin Company executive Darwin Martin’s Parkside house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1906. In addition to the Larkin Administration Building, Frank Lloyd Wright designed Buffalo houses for three different Larkin executives as well as Darwin Martin’s summer house, Greycliff, on Lake Erie.

Buffalo’s Steer Restaurant on Main Street in University Heights offering some regional classics for lunch, like Buffalo wings and beef on weck followed by sponge candy from nearby Parkside Candies.

Steer Restaurant owner Tucker Curtin brought a 1952 Mountain View to University Heights in 2017, opening it as the Lake Effect Diner. When Butko & Patrick’s “Diners of Pennsylvania” was published in 1999, the Lake Effect was operating as the China Buddha in the Philadelphia Main Line suburb of Wayne.

Buffalo architect G. Martin Wolfe designed several Main Street showrooms and two-story retail buildings including the 1927 Parkside Candies storefront and tearoom that fronted their factory in University Heights.

Parkside Candies in Buffalo’s University Heights was opened as a tearoom, ice cream counter and candy shop in 1927. Tearooms were feminine space, and Parkside Candies’ Neoclassical interior was designed to appeal to women from middle- and upper-income households in Parkside.

Allen Herschel started manufacturing hand-carved carousels in North Tonawanda, New York, in 1883. The plant on Thompson Street, now the Herschel Carrousel Museum, continued to produce carousels and other amusement rides until 1960. The museum picked up and preserved a New Jersey Pure Oil filling station cottage built in 1930.

Riding the merry-go-round at the Herschel Carrousel Museum in North Tonawanda, New York.

Herschell Carrousel also manufactured amusement park striking machines like these hand-carved bulls that tested how well the farmhands and factory workers walking the midway could kill a cow with a long-handled mallet. Drop the bull to its knees and win a prize.

Falls Street in the tourist downtown of Niagara Falls, New York, is a sad shadow of its pre-urban renewal self that once contained a vibrant mix of hotels, theaters, banks and businesses. A 1965 urban renewal plan by acclaimed architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee turned Falls Street into a pedestrian mall anchored by an expanded Prospect Park at one end and a new convention center at the other with the Rainbow Mall in between. Expecting to be a showcase project of Modern urban planning, its fatal flaw was the wholesale obliteration of the city’s historic built environment, a tragic decision that can never be undone.

The Tudor-styled Red Coach Inn at Buffalo Avenue and Old Main Street is a Niagara Falls throw-back from 1923. The turtle head peaking around the back belongs to the Native American Center for the Living Arts that operated from 1981 until 1995 when the city took the building for back taxes. It’s been empty ever since.

The 1929 United Office Building survived the urban renewal purge that devasted Niagara Falls, New York, in the 1960s. The Mayan Revival Art Deco details, and color-graded brick façade was preserved in its conversion to the Giacomo Hotel. The 1924 Niagara Hotel across the street, once the most prestigious accommodation on the American side, awaits resurrection.

Wendt’s, a Niagara Falls dairy founded in 1929, built their Streamline Moderne plant on Buffalo Avenue in 1948, which produced milk and other dairy products until 2008.

Prophet Isaiah’s Second Coming House, is the Niagara Frontier’s most eye-popping piece of roadside folk art. Jamaican carpenter Isaiah Robertson started to transform his house on Ontario Avenue in 2014, working on his polychromatic, scripture-inspired woodwork until his death in 2020. Robertson believed Jesus’s Second Coming was eminent and would happen at Three Sisters Islands in Niagara Falls, which is why he incorporated a 300-pound boulder from the islands above Horseshoe Falls in the decorative façade of his house.

Members of the Society for Commercial Archeology, always fans of roadside folk art, take in Prophet Isaiah’s Second Coming House on Ontario Avenue in Niagara Falls, New York.

Last stop for a comprehensive sweep of any region…the cemetery. Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York, is the final resting place for several legendary personalities, including Annie Taylor, the first person to survive a trip of Horseshoe Falls in a barrel. She went over in 1901 (with her cat) when she was 63-years-old in an attempt achieve enough fame and fortune to fund her retirement. She died in 1921, a resident of the Niagara County poorhouse, and was buried next Carlisle Graham, who in 1886 was the first person to successful shoot the Whirlpool Rapids. A dazed but living Taylor was to shore after her 1901 stunt by Graham and Red Hill Sr., famed riverman decorated with four Niagara River life-saving medals.

Every summer day at Niagara Falls ends like it is the Fourth of July.

[NOTE: This recap of the SCA’s 48th Annual Conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario, was originally posted to SCA’s Facebook.]

The Society for Commercial Archeology (SCA) members from across North America were drawn to Table Rock to experience the splendor of Niagara Falls.

The SCA’s opening reception was held on the terrace at Queen Victoria Place, built in Queen Victoria Park as the Refectory Restaurant in 1904.

Travel writers complained that Niagara Falls was ruined by the rampant commercialization of the Canadian Front by the 1850s. In 1885, however, Goat Island and Prospect Point on the American side were enveloped in a state park designed in part by Frederick Law Olmsted. Following the same Central Park-like design inspiration, Queen Victoria Park opened on the Canadian Front three years later.

Queen Victoria Place, the SCA Niagara Falls Conference Opening Reception venue, is at bottom center in this view of Horseshoe Falls from the Skylon.

Opening Reception of the Society for Commercial Archeology’s first international conference Niagara Falls on the terrace at Queen Victoria Place Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Food, drink, and falls at Queen Victoria Place, Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Landscapes related to Nature, Tourism, and Industry were interwoven into Kevin Patrick’s keynote address, “Layered Niagara” with an accompanying guide explaining two days of Kevin Patrick field trips. A few guides are still available…contact President Brian Gallaugher. Having to yell my presentation over the roar of Niagara Falls made this one of the most memorable venues I ever spoke at.

Although looking like a wedding party, these stereographed tourists at Goat Island’s Terrapin Point were outfitted in 1906 casualwear. Romantic landscape tourists of the Victorian Era interpreted nature like a landscape painting with three modes of expression: sublime, beautiful, and picturesque. All three could be found at Niagara, typically located along circuitous paths easily navigated by the tourists cloaked in styles of the time who saw nature as a thing to be contemplated, not a challenge to be conquered.

SUBLIME. Sublime scenery expressed the awesome power of an immutable and unconquerable nature represented by craggy mountains, dramatic weather, or the sudden drop of an endless sheet of water. Victorian tourists disappointed with the mile-long horizontal extent of Niagara’s two falls (more a Beautiful thing) sought the sublime by exerting much effort to find a vantage point below or even behind the falls.

BEAUTIFUL. Beautiful scenery was calming, an Edenic portrayal of rounded hills and fertile plains like the view of the Niagara Peninsula from Queenston Heights accentuated by a walk up the spiral staircase to the top of Brock’s Monument.

PICTURESQUE. English artist and writer William Gilpin added the Picturesque to Edmund Burke’s binary and contrasting Sublime and Beautiful. Picturesque scenery was more intimate, irregular, untamed and frequently paired with ruins, architectural follies, or other works of humans that could be interpreted as ancient. Victorian tourists thought Three Sisters Islands to be delightfully picturesque, made more so by the “hermit” Frances Abbott who lived there from 1829 until he drowned in the Niagara River in 1931. The small cascade between Goat Island and Asenath Island is still known as Hermit Falls.

MASS TOURISM and MODERNISM eroded the old romantic landscape tourism aesthetic, but the Niagara attractions the Victorians saw still exist. Michael Hirsch is outfitted for a boat trip to the base of the falls inaugurated by the first Maid of the Mist steamboat in 1846.

A stiff wind blows down the gorge as we ride the Canadian Hornblower Niagara to the base of the falls.

The American Falls, a side gorge waterfall carrying only 10% of the water going over Niagara Falls, from the deck of the Hornblower Niagara.

Into the maelstrom at the base of Horseshoe Falls.

Some kind of insanity compels us to ride a boat close enough to North America’s largest waterfall to see only the white mist it stirs up.

Christine turns away from the awful sublimity of Niagara.

Ron L. soaked to satisfaction of having done Niagara.

The Society of Commercial Archeology conquers the unconquerable Niagara.

Rainbow Garden and Oakes Garden Theatre designed spaces at the gateway to Queen Victoria Park include an English landscaped garden, picturesque pond, and sweeping greensward all within a block of Clifton Hill’s House of Frankenstein.

When the Clifton House burned to the ground in 1935, gold mining millionaire Harry Oakes bought the lot to be converted into the Oakes Garden Theatre. This was the first step in a landscaped garden gateway designed for the space between Queen Victoria Park and the tourist approach points from the United States via the Honeymoon Bridge, from the General Brock Hotel, and the Tower Inn Terminal for tourists taking the Niagara Falls, St. Catharines & Toronto boats and electric interurbans from Toronto. The Honeymoon Bridge was destroyed by a 1938 ice jam, and the interurban station was demolished to make way for its Rainbow Bridge replacement that opened with the Rainbow Garden in 1941.

Following the premier of Marylin Monroe’s 1953 “Niagara,” Niagara Falls had its busy tourist season ever, many clamoring to stay at the Rainbow Cabins featured in the movie. Alas, the cabins were only props built at the Inspiration Point pavilion in Queen Victoria Park. The stone pavilion, constructed in 1907, was razed in the 1990s, but its fraternal twin survives at nearby Ramblers Rest.

There was a Rainbow Cabin Camp at Niagara Falls when “Niagara” was being filmed, but not the ones used in the movie. How many Marilyn Monroe-loving tourists were mistakenly drawn to this cabin court on Murray Hill in Falls View? It was rebuilt as the midcentury Modern Rainbow Motel sporting a decidedly Wildwood vibe right down to its poolside palm tree.

Another Niagara movie motel stands along Ellen Avenue on Clifton Hill. The Oyo Motel was the Rainbow Inn in the Canadian thriller, “Disappearance on Clifton Hill.”

The SCA rides a WE-GO articulated bus out to the Lundy’s Lane Motel Strip.

Queen Elizabeth Way, opened in 1939, carried Niagara-bound tourists directly to Lundy’s Lane where dozens of motels were built in the postwar period, including the A-1 Motel, well-maintained and little changed since 1949.

Appreciating the postmodern retro sign at the Flying Saucer Restaurant on Lundy’s Lane in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Lunch time at the Flying Saucer Restaurant, built by Henry Di Cienzo as a Lundy’s Lane drive-in in 1972 and expanded ten years later with the addition of a dining room pod.

High winds killed our ride on the 1916 Whirlpool Aero Car over Niagara River circles in a counterclockwise direction having partially excavated the old St. Davids Gorge where the river flowed before the last glacial advance filled it with drift.

The Floral Clock, a Niagara Falls photo favorite, was built at the Sir Adam Beck hydropower plant in 1950.

Whatever your fear -heights, tight spaces, exercise, death- Brock’s Monument will bring it out. We spiraled up the same 235 steps every tourist tread since 1856 to reach the top of the tallest military monument on the British Empire. General Isaac Brock was killed in the Battle of Queenston Heights when the Americans invaded British Canada during the War of 1812. He’s buried at the base of the column.

Touring Clifton Hill with Peter Glaser. Starting as a strangers path between the Michigan Central Railroad station and Queen Victoria Park, Clifton Hill attracted auto camps and cabin courts before World War II that became large motels after World War II. Wax museums, and amusements made Clifton Hill a midway by the turn of the 21st century.

How the amusements on Clifton Hill relate to Niagara Falls: tourists drawn to the spectacle of Niagara support accessory attractions and tourist services while diversions are drawn to the agglomeration of tourists seducing them with their own kind of spectacle.

Clifton Hill Crazy. Despite the amusement detail that includes the Sky Wheel, a flaming volcano at Dinosaur Adventure Golf, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the entire south side of Clifton Hill Street is owned by the one firm, the Harry Oakes Company that bought the Samuel Zimmerman Estate in 1928.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not arrived on Clifton Hill in 1963 and was remodeled into the tilted tower in 2004.

Thomas Barnett opened his Niagara Falls Museum on the Canadian Front in 1827. His collection was an odd assortment of stuffed animals, Indian artifacts, and mummies (one who turned out to be Ramses I). Clifton Hill is still a place of wild incongruities where a piece of the Berlin Wall stands a short walk away from the Three Stooges.

What do you think, Tyrion?

NOTE: This recap of the SCA’s 48th Annual Conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario, was originally posted to SCA’s Facebook. For more photos, stories, videos, events, and downloads, visit the Society for Commercial Archeology. And while you are there, consider becoming a member.

Woman posing by the Hotel General Brock sign in Niagara Falls, date unknown.

THE TWIN CITIES of Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario, have experienced a boom-and-bust tourist economy over the years. But the place names associated with Niagara still conjure romance: Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist, and Bridal Veil Falls. Fitting perhaps for a destination known for the last two centuries as “Honeymoon Capital of the World.”

For almost that long, folks have photographed the Falls. The first known photo was Hugh Lee Pattinson’s 1840 image of Horseshoe Falls, the largest of the three waterfalls forming Niagara Falls. Using the then-new daguerreotype photographic process, Pattinson would have taken around 20 minutes to shoot that scene.

Fifty years after that photo, the introduction of the Kodak camera dramatically simplified picture-taking, and tourists flocking to Niagara were some of the beneficiaries of this democratization of photography.

Below are samples of Niagara photographs from my collection and that of fellow photo collector William Jones. Most are 20th-century candid snapshots, but there are also 19th-century tintypes and “arcade” photos shot in commercial studios with families posed in front of painted backdrops of the Falls.

Tourists at American Falls, 1947.

TOP: Tourists in rain gear are on a boat, probably Maid of the Mist, below a bridge (likely Rainbow Bridge), date unknown. LEFT: Mother and two children at Niagara Falls, date unknown. BOTTOM: Couple in raincoats on a boat (possibly Maid of the Mist) passing what appears to be Rainbow Bridge, date unknown.

Woman and girl on the Maid of the Mist, 1947.

TOP: Men with cigars for studio arcade portrait, date unknown. William Jones collection. LEFT: Group at Cave of the Winds, date unknown. BOTTOM: A studio arcade “Real Photo Postcard” with a family posing before a Niagara Falls painted backdrop, 1925 or 1928.

Studio arcade portrait, date unknown. William Jones collection.

UPPER-LEFT: Women holding pail prop for studio arcade portrait, date unknown. William Jones collection. UPPER-RIGHT: Studio arcade portrait with servicemen, date unknown. William Jones collection. BOTTOM: Studio arcade portrait of five men, date unknown. William Jones collection.

This article originally appeared in the SCA Journal, Spring 2025, Vol. 43, No. 1. The SCA Journal is a semi-annual publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.

By Douglas Towne

A common criticism of roadside buildings is that, from an architectural perspective, they’re not impressive creations. That statement, however, is not always valid. Bertrand “Bud” Goldberg is a fascinating example of a famed architect who initially displayed considerable design talents in small-scale commercial structures.

Goldberg used early career successes, designing buildings used by motorists, as a stepping stone to more challenging architectural issues such as affordable housing, mixed-use urban development, and medical facilities. The Chicago-born architect attended Harvard, followed by the Bauhaus in Germany in the early 1930s. The latter institute harmonized the arts and integrated them within an architectural concept. “This omniscient view of ‘total building design’ nurtured Goldberg’s emerging outlook for combining efficiency, economy, and humane approaches to users’ needs for his architectural credo,” says James Logan Abell, a Phoenix architect. Goldberg subsequently returned to his hometown to study engineering at Armour Institute, now the Illinois Institute of Technology, and opened an architecture office at age 25 in 1937. Two early commissions were for the Clark Maple Gas Station and North Pole Ice Cream. Goldberg made filling your tank and satisfying your sweet tooth unforgettable experiences.

The Chicago-born architect attended Harvard, followed by the Bauhaus in Germany in the early 1930s. The latter institute harmonized the arts and integrated them within an architectural concept. “This omniscient view of ‘total building design’ nurtured Goldberg’s emerging outlook for combining efficiency, economy, and humane approaches to users’ needs for his architectural credo,” says James Logan Abell, a Phoenix architect. Goldberg subsequently returned to his hometown to study engineering at Armour Institute, now the Illinois Institute of Technology, and opened an architecture office at age 25 in 1937. Two early commissions were for the Clark Maple Gas Station and North Pole Ice Cream. Goldberg made filling your tank and satisfying your sweet tooth unforgettable experiences.

TOP and ABOVE: Clark Maple Gas Station in Chicago, 1938. Hedrich Blessing. INSET: Bertrand “Bud” Goldberg, 1970s. All images G. Goldberg + Associates unless noted.

The Clark Maple Gas Station was uniquely constructed in 1938 as a solution to demanding site conditions requiring minimal excavation. The two masts on which the roof hung were a simple answer inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s buildings for the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. Transparent walls exposed two washing-greasing bays, adding to the building’s appeal. Motorists flocked to this modern Chicago station. “It has shown that even Standard Oil could underestimate … what a new building like this could do for one of its gasoline dealers,” Goldberg told the Architectural Forum: “One of the notable features of the gas station were the neon lights spelling, ‘Gas For Less’ woven into the cable supports from the masts,” says his son, Geoff Goldberg. “My father told me that the neon signage at the gas station ‘looked lovely, and lasted about one night, as the winds broke the neon.’”

North Pole Ice Cream in River Forest, IL, 1938. Hedrich Blessing.

That same year, Goldberg designed another futuristic commercial building, North Pole Ice Cream, in the Chicago suburb of River Forest. The architect created it as a portable store that could move north and south, like migrating birds, to sell ice cream in season. “Its glass walls and cantilevered roof were suspended from a mast anchored to a truck chassis, a part of the building,” according to www.bertrandgoldberg.com. The architect envisioned a fleet of these stores served by a “mother truck“ that manufactured ice cream.

Geoff says his parents were interested in mobility, speed, and flexibility and their related architectural aspects, be it diners, roadside foods, or ideas about flexibility and convenience. “These were all part of the modern world and were embraced as part of our thinking. My father was interested in how things were used and made, but also in the role of time, the making, and the day-to-day experience of architecture. For example, he was interested in autos and designed a rear-engine one in 1938.” Another industrial focus of Goldberg’s was prefabrication. It was found in his housing work from 1938, where Goldberg used prefabricated wood panels and designed the factory that produced them. Also, in 1946 with a prefabricated bathroom which Frank Lloyd Wright used in one of his houses and then in the plywood boxcars of the early 1950s.

Goldberg’s rendering of the Route 66 Motel in Chicago, 1958.

Twenty years later, the Route 66 Motel was an unbuilt project for a site on Chicago’s South Shore Drive, which previewed two round towers of differing heights. Goldberg would later reprise this 1958 design feature on a much grander scale.

Photograph and model of Goldberg’s Marina City in Chicago, mid-1960s.

Goldberg honed his talents from these commercial structures to create his seminal work, the twin towers of Marina City in Chicago, in the mid-1960s. The 62-story residential concrete towers anchored a theater, rail line, ice-skating rink, bowling alley, and office building. The spiral ramps on the first 20 floors of the towers show the parked vehicles rather than hiding them—an unusual approach. More than a century later, the development remains a highly desirable address.

A proposed complex and hospital tower of Good Samaritan Hospital, Phoenix, 1982.

The Chicago architect would later adopt aspects of the Marina City design for other projects, including medical facilities like Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix. The hospital’s concrete towers were how I first became aware of Goldberg’s work from an article by local architect James Logan Abell. He, along with Rusty McCaleb and others, aided Goldberg in its creation in the early 1980s. Goldberg also partnered with Herman Chanen, a prominent Phoenix contractor, in proposing a much larger development near the hospital for housing, offices, and the healthcare-related industry, of which only the office building was built.

Pat Casler (blue top) and Geoff Goldberg (tan shirt) at the Englewood Diner in Dorchester, MA, during the All-Night, All-Night Diner Tour, 1980.

Besides Goldberg’s early forays into small-scale commercial buildings, the architect’s family has another serendipitous SCA connection. Like father, like son, Geoff has his own successful architectural firm in Chicago, G. Goldberg + Associates, and was an early member of the SCA. “A friend and I used a diner to analyze HVAC systems in architecture school,” Geoff recalls. “Heat was generated at the cooktop, and cooling was achieved through flow-through ventilation. The professor was less than enthusiastic, but the class loved it.”

From left, Chester Liebs, Pat Casler, Susan Maycock, and Charlie Sullivan before the 1980 All-Night tour. Both photos by Jim Peter.

Geoff fondly recalls our organization, especially attending the All-Night, All-Night Diner Tour in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1980 with SCA founder Chester Liebs and friends Pat Casler and Jim Peter. Geoff has hazy recollections of the long-ago event, but Peter commented, “My memory of the event is the strange sense of adventure amidst a small group of folks who cared about this sort of stuff at that time.”

This article originally appeared in the SCA Journal, Fall 2023, Vol. 41, No. 2. The SCA Journal is a semi-annual publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.

Recorded Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Join Isaac Jeffreys as he explores the intersection of history, memory, and transformation through photography.

A Hudson Valley native and Parsons BFA graduate, Jeffreys is drawn to 20th-century spaces—most notably the Mid-century modern ‘Borscht Belt’ resorts of the Catskills. Shooting entirely on film, he lights up long-abandoned buildings after dark, using carefully staged scenes and long exposures to reanimate places left without power—or presence. His work invites viewers into dreamlike ruins where nostalgia lingers and the past refuses to stay quiet. Since 2022, he has served as visual director of The Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project, blending preservation with a cinematic sense of storytelling. His latest series merges New York City nightlife figures with the fading splendor of historic landmarks, extending his exploration of memory’s hold on the present.

A forthcoming photo book deepens that vision.