Main Street to Miracle Mile. By Chester H. Liebs. (London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995.)

            Liebs, a teacher of landscape history and landscape reading at the University of Vermont wrote this work from his own interest in helping to expand architecture, landscape, historical preservation studies, and general public interest.  Liebs also played a key role in helping to establish the Society for Industrial Archeology in 1971.  Here he encouraged the study and protection of a rapidly disappearing industrial heritage, this also turned his attention towards motorcars and how they have brought about changes in road side architecture.

            The book starts off by explaining the drastic changes brought about by the automobile.  Before, taking trips even across short distances would prove to be time consuming and sometimes impractical.  But with the introduction of roads and cars like the affordable Model T, people could travel many miles over a much shorter period of time.  Liebs continues by explaining that the most dramatic change in the windshield movie was the whole sale injection of “commercials” into the roadside panorama.  The book also talks about auto show rooms and their coming into existence.  Originally starting out as markets that sold other products as well as automobiles and eventually switching over to solely manufacturing vehicles.  This was no easy task due to the fact these building were not built to support the construction of cars nor were some of them built in ideal places for auto show rooms, so these automobile manufacturing plants underwent many changes over the years.  There are also sections that cover the importance of gasoline and the emergence of gas station into this new motorized life style.  Automobiles also made it possible for the transportation of mass goods and produce to reach one place called a supermarket where people could travel to get all of their consumable needs at one location.  Entertainment such a miniature golf courses and drive in movie theaters became possible.  The automobile also brought into existence the Motel where people could stay when traveling away from home.  And lastly Liebs expresses the importance of the car when correlated with restaurants and roadside diners.

            Over all this was a marvelous book.  Liebs points out road side architecture facts that we now take for granted.  I probably would have never gave a second thought to why miniature golf courses came into existence or why now they only appear near tourist strips like Myrtle Beach, SC.  He masterfully explains how the automobile brought about each aspect of road side architecture and how each aspect changed over time.  One example of this is the gas pump.  First of all, before the automobile, Liebs points out that gas was just a by product from kerosene that was rendered useless.  Of course that changed with the car but what I did not know was that gas pumps used to be curb side.  There was no gas station, there was just a pump conveniently placed near busy shops or garages.  Then we see how this becomes troublesome because roads become more populated so we see the emergence of gas stations.

            This is a must read if you are researching or if you are just interested in how the vehicle changed society and the economy.  The automobile opened up a new world of travel, advertising, and businesses that would have never been possible.  And the book does a great job in explaining the journey of those businesses and how they changed to fit a more travel oriented society.