Vanishing America: The End of Main Street

Michael Eastman, William H. Gass

Rizzoli, 2008 - Architecture - 192 pages

Think of the quirky buildings you pass every day but whose quiet beauty you take for granted--the moviehouses, juke joints, soda fountains, barbershops, roadside diners, and storefront churches. You don't miss them until they're gone. As suburban sprawl and strip malls conquer the country, these vestiges of a lost way of life are falling under the wrecking ball. Here the photographer Michael Eastman has made the ultimate road trip, crisscrossing the nation dozens of times, to capture these buildings on film before they vanish. These dreamy images call us to question what we choose to let go in the wake of contemporary life, with a cool melancholy that evokes the work of Edward Hopper, Jack Kerouac, and William Eggleston. There is a wry sense of humor here as well. The book delights in the idiosyncracies of America's vernacular styles, ranging from Depression Deco to New England clapboard in random juxtapositions that accrue over time in a town's landscape. Countless visual puns arise among the book's many detailed images of signs and statuettes. Vanishing America catalogues great everyday American architecture and design. But it also offers a provocative portrait of the silent emptiness that has descended upon vanishing small communities everywhere.

Contents

• Theaters 13 Churches 33 Hangouts 41 Doors: 57
• Stores 125 Services 141 Automobiles 155 Hotels: 163

About the author

Michael Eastman’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has published two previous books of photography. He lives in St. Louis. Douglas Brinkley was born in Atlanta, Georgia on December 14, 1960. He received a B.A. from Ohio State University in 1982 and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989. He was a professor at Tulane University, Princeton University, the U.S. Naval Academy, Hofstra University, and the University of New Orleans. In 2007, he became a professor at Rice University and the James Baker Institute for Public Policy. He is a commentator for CBS News and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair. His first book, Jean Monnet: The Path to European Unity, was published in 1992. His other works include Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, Cronkite, and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America. He also wrote three books with historian Stephen E. Ambrose: The Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, Witness to History, and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today. He has won several awards including the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Vanishing America: The End of Main Street
• Authors: Michael Eastman, William H. Gass
• Photographs by: Michael Eastman
• author of text accompanying photos: William H. Gass
• Contributor: Douglas Brinkley
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Rizzoli, 2008
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Jul 24, 2009
• ISBN: 0847830403, 9780847830404
• Length: 192 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / General; Architecture / Regional; Art / General; Photography / Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions / General; Photography / Individual Photographers / General; Photography / Photoessays & Documentaries; Photography / Subjects & Themes / Architectural & Industrial; Photography / Subjects & Themes / Regional