DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Good-Bye Pennsylvania 6-5000

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Good-Bye Pennsylvania 6-5000

When New York City’s Hotel Pennsylvania opened in 1919 it was the largest hotel in the world, with 2,200 rooms each with its own private bathroom, then an unprecedented amenity for a hotel of this scale.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Country Squire Diner

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Country Squire Diner

This mid-1960s postcard view of the Country Squire presents the diner and Philadelphia's western suburbs as cutting-edge Modern.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Wagon Wheel Lodge

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Wagon Wheel Lodge

Walt Williamson started building his rustic, roadside wonder in 1936 using utility poles and old bridge beams.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: San Fernando Valley at Midcentury

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: San Fernando Valley at Midcentury

Non-California’s introduction to the Los Angeles Basin’s San Fernando Valley came with the 1968 inauguration of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In broadcast from “beautiful downtown Burbank” at the Color City television studio opened there in 1952.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Midcentury Modern Tucson, Arizona in “A Kiss Before Dying”

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Midcentury Modern Tucson, Arizona in “A Kiss Before Dying”

Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward run around in the 1956 thriller, “A Kiss Before Dying,” but the real star is midcentury Modern Tucson, Arizona, presented in supersaturated technicolor and Cinemascope.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Pennsylvania's Rexall Drug Store

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Pennsylvania’s Rexall Drug Store

The soda fountain counter at Indiana, Pennsylvania's Rexall Drug Store in the Odd Fellows Building on Philadelphia Street.
DR PATRICK'S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Caves and Cars on Missouri’s Route 66

DR PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Caves and Cars on Missouri’s Route 66

The limestones of the Missouri Ozarks are pock marked with show caves that prospered on the traffic of Route 66.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: El Solano Hotel

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: El Solano Hotel

The linen postcard with its soft hues, picturesque edits and eye-catching graphics was the perfect medium for image-making.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Bell’s Tourist Camp

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Bell’s Tourist Camp

On this 1930 postcard, Bell’s Tourist Camp shouts out to U.S. 71 motorists coming into Texarkana from the north.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Jersey Mall

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Jersey Mall

When Viennese architect Victor Gruen designed Minneapolis’s Southdale Center, he never suspected these retail mega-generators of auto-sprawl would replace the town centers he was trying to celebrate.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Fremont Street

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Fremont Street

Nevada ended its frontier ways in 1909 when it made gambling illegal to project a sense of civilized modernity to the rest of the nation. Just 22 years later, it voted gambling back as an economic panacea to fight the Great Depression.
DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Chinn’s Cave House

DR. PATRICK’S POSTCARD ROADSIDE: Chinn’s Cave House

George Chinn opened up – literally, with dynamite – Chinn’s Cave House at Brooklyn Bridge, Kentucky, in the 1920s.