Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts Gulfport, MS 1979 Margolies, John, photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Last year Malvaney’s post about roadside Americana photographer John Margolies ended with the wish that someday his photos, which had been donated to the Library of Congress, would be made available for the public to see.  That day has arrived, my friends.  Click here to view these images on the Library of Congress website.

Dixiana Motel sign Vicksburg, MS 1982 Margolies, John, photographer

Windmill (Vertical), Jackson Golf World, Route 51 Jackson, MS 1986 Margolies, John, photographer

Public building Winona, MS 2003 Margolies, John, photographer

John Margolies’s photographs inspired many people to look seriously and document seriously the temporary or ephemeral commercial architecture all around us.  Out of a total 11,698 images made available by the LOC, the 65 images of Mississippi are from 16 different towns.  The Mississippi subject matter ranges from motels and gas stations to mini golf and neon signs, and they date between the late 1970s through the 1980s, with one image as recent as 2003.  I am not sure if there are more images to be made public, but even if not, many of these images are of buildings no longer extant, making these few images all the more valuable.  I did catch one error in the organizing of the images.  The images labeled as from Columbia, Mississippi appear to be of buildings in Columbus, Mississippi.  Below are the images organized by location.

• Jackson [20]
• Gulfport [12]
• Natchez [7]
• Columbia [5] These are actually images from Columbus, Mississippi.
• Winona [4]
• Washington [4]
• Vicksburg [3]
• Forest [2]
• Ocean Springs [1]
• Newton [1]
• Louisville [1]
• Port Gibson [1]
• Tupelo [1]
• Tremont [1]
• Meridian [1]
• Starkville [1]

What are your favorite images captured by Margolies’s lense? What are the images that surprise you? What roadside images might you capture today?

Tasty Kreem ice cream sign, Rt. 49 Gulfport, MS 1979 Margolies, John, photographer

Chico’s Motel Forest, MS 1982 Margolies, John, photographer

Categories: Asides, Building Types, Columbus, Cool Old Places, Demolition/Abandonment, Forest, Gulfport, Hotels, Jackson, Lost Mississippi, Louisville, Meridian, Modernism, Natchez, Newton, Ocean Springs, Port Gibson, Starkville, Tupelo, Vernacular Architecture, Vicksburg, Washington, Winona

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