Library of Congress Releases 11,700+ John Margolies Photos of Roadside America

The Library of Congress has made over 11,700 color slides from the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive available for free download and reuse. John Margolies (1940–2016), an art historian and self-taught photographer, spent four decades documenting quirky commercial vernacular architecture—gas stations shaped like teapots, doughnut-shaped restaurants, theme motels, and mini golf courses—along America's blue highways. His work was supported by a Guggenheim Foundation grant and architect Philip Johnson. Margolies served as an editor at Architectural Record and program director at the Architectural League of New York. He resisted the label "kitsch" for his subjects, arguing in a 1987 interview with the Globe and Mail that such buildings were as important as major monuments. The archive, selected as the library's "free to use and reuse" collection in July 2017, includes 11,710 color slides with subject and geographical headings added by library staff. Users are encouraged to create postcards, t-shirts, or other derivative works.