From the famous Route 66 to Kerouacs On the Road, not forgetting many cult movies like Dennis Hoppers Easy Rider, American highways have become part of the public imagination and a symbol for travel and adventure.
Some of the features of American highways, like gas stations, diners and motels, are very familiar also for the people who have never been to the United States, and this is due above all to the great number of movies which have been set in these places. However, if these buildings are well-known by many people, this is due also to the creativity and imagination of the first roadside entrepreneurs, who built bizarre motels, gas stations and restaurants, and who vied each other to catch the drivers attention and get them to stop. If you wish to see these peculiar buildings, which are now disappearing, but you do not have the possibility to travel throughout the United States, you can plan a budget holiday in Rome and visit the exhibition American Roadside Architecture, from the 27th of March to the 3rd of May at the H.C. Andersen Museum: you still have few weeks time to book a 1 star hotel in Rome and visit the exhibition, which includes 55 pictures realised by John Margolies, a photographer, architect, author of books, lecturer, expert and historian of architecture, who has travelled throughout the United States for about 30 years, looking for the most unusual and picturesque buildings.
From his pictures a very interesting image of America in the first half of the 20th century emerge: in that period, also because of the spread of cars, more streets and highways began to be built, while a new category of people, that of travellers, began to come into sight, and they had new requests: stopping and sleeping near the highway, refuelling and eating something. For this reason American highways began to host motels, restaurants and gas stations characterised by huge and bizarre-shaped signs, which were meant to catch the drivers attention: gigantic hot dog-, ice cream-shaped signs, or signs representing some of the symbols of the regions where these buildings arose, but in some cases the shapes of signs and buildings were simply born of the imagination of the new roadside entrepreneurs.
The Rome exhibition is divided into 3 sections: gas station, diners and lodging, and all the sections will amaze the visitors and will make them plunger into the past and discover a feature of American architecture which is not always taken into consideration, but which is very useful as it can tell us something more about American society.
The exhibition is an unmissable event for all those who have rented a holiday house in Rome also because it is not so easy to admire these picturesque buildings in loco, as they are gradually disappearing or are in decline: this is due to the great chains of restaurants and hotels which are replacing the old diners and motels, which were mainly family run, to the building of a new system of fast relief roads, but also to the removal of the old petrol pumps as a consequence of some laws for the environment safeguard.
Tickets: free event
Date: 27th March 3rd May 2009
Location: H.C. Andersen Museum, Rome, Italy
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