Flashy American Building Designs
From the 1930s through the 1960s, it was very common for your ancestors in America to get in the family car to go to special attractions for entertainment – most known as ‘roadside attractions’. These spots also had diners or restaurants to feed the visitors and gift shops with souvenirs. The best way to get a family to stop and visit the attraction was to have something ‘flashy’, that would catch their attention.
So came the birth of the term ‘flashy architecture’, a usual building. These were novelty buildings such as a giant windmill, a coffee pot, a ketchup bottle, numerous animal shapes (a horse, goose, buffalo, duck, alligator, dinosaur, etc). Anything was done, including outer space-themed places.
There were even usual-looking roadside motels in different shapes such as block tepees that served as rooms / cottages.. True many of the vintage roadside attractions no longer exist, but it has become popular in recent years in certain locations to have usually shaped hotels.
Las Vegas is famous for that. There is the Egyptian pyramid which is the hotel and a giant Sphinx in front of the Luxor Hotel and the Eiffel Tower with the Parisian Hotel, the Venetian with its Venice gondolas and Piazza in Vegas, Statue of Liberty with New York Hotel and the Hardrock Hotel with a big guitar displayed in Vegas. In Hollywood, FL the whole hotel and its rooms for Hardrock is the shape of a giant guitar.
There might all types of vintage flashy attractions your ancestors went to and there are postcards or souvenirs kept in the family. See what you can find. Even if you don’t find the vintage photos or postcards, if you do find of places they visited with such flashy buildings, you might be able to find online some photos of those places. That would add some interesting aspects to the family history.
Photo: Flashy example of a tea pot building.
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