Billy Hutchinson

Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture. By Chester H. Liebs. (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).  Reflection a Decade Later, Preface, Acknowledgements, Illustrations, Epilogue, Notes, Selected Bibliography, index.  Pp. 259. (24.95, Paperback).

With Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture, Chester Liebs presents the evolution of commercial architecture brought about by the automobile. Liebs, a professor of history and founding director of the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Vermont, stresses a parallel between the movie screen and the automobile windshield as “framing one of the most fascinating movies of all time – the landscape.” Liebs illuminates these changes through a seemingly unconventional manner,  using structures as artifacts in lieu of documents.

Liebs argues that “when automobiles became relatively commonplace that widespread commercialization of the landscape began to change.” Liebs’ text is organized around three sections, space, image and type. Each subdivision then conveys how the automobile changed an element of commercial architecture.

Historically, the “Main Streets” of towns were built around railroads and railroad depots. The introduction of the automobile challenged the design of these streets. Liebs points out that by the 1920s “it became increasingly evident that Main Street was an invention of a bygone era and had not been designed for the automobile.” Liebs then uses the rest of this section which deals with space to cover the evolution of the street and how the automobile affected the ways in which commerce was planned, built and carried about.

In the second section, Liebs tackles the way these structures changed aesthetically as the relationship between America and automobile strengthened. In particularly, Liebs takes the reader through the most prolific phases such as modern, art-deco, domestic and fantasy and how each phase changed the appearance of roadside structures. Liebs maintains his theme of the landscape as a movie by suggesting these phases were nothing more than “wardrobe changes.”  Here, Liebs also stresses the importance of advertising of branding and the subsequent marketing along the roadways.

In the third, and largest, section of the text, Liebs presents seven types of structures and how the automobile changed each. These structures are: auto showrooms, gas stations, supermarkets, miniature golf courses, drive-in theaters, motels and restaurants. While this is by no means an all inclusive list of structures that have been affected with the introductions; the types presented exhibit the largest spectrum of change.  Liebs reinforces the evolution of each type by using pictures from each stage of development.

Although his thesis is presented early, it is not until the epilogue that we see Leibs’ purpose in this text. In the epilogue, Liebs presents a cry out for the increasing of awareness of the importance of historic preservation. When the original text was printed in 1984 many may have viewed some of the structures presented as nothing more than roadway eyesores. Liebs hopes the text sets about to change public conceptions of these historical artifacts.

Liebs’ book is very well organized and easy to read. His effective use of strong photographs from a broad range of places and times reinforces his printed claims and present them on a national scale. Liebs’ use of imagery and parallels between the movie screen and the automobile windshield forever change those who read his text.

Liebs' biggest drawback is time. Even though the newest edition has a section of reflections ten years after the initial printing, advances in technology and social concern have dated this text. America’s landscape has transformed exponentially since the most recent printing and this is reflected in the text. Additionally, Liebs briefly hints but does not hypothesize what the future holds.

When initially introduced this text broke significant ground in a new discipline of history. Liebs does not pigeonhole this text into a traditional historical text but draws from other disciplines such as architecture, sociology and business to round out his book. In the end, Liebs has presented a work that inspires readers to look around and see what the man made environment tells us about ourselves before we destroy it to build a new high rise.