Lost Landmarks

A Tudor-style roadside restaurant on Route 17 that served burgers, pizza and breakfast from 1956 until it closed in 2021. Rebuilt from closing-day photos, Google Maps and Street View, and shown on a fall afternoon in 1986, inside and out: the counter hall with its menu boards and red pendants, the dining room with the glass-cube lantern and the stone fireplace, and the BREAKFAST neon in the window.

A 1956 Paramount dining car at Snyder and Passyunk in South Philadelphia, under a Penn Neon sign with a coffee-cup clock, open around the clock until a kitchen fire in 2022

A 1957 motel on East Fremont Street in Las Vegas, under a gull-wing BLUE ANGEL arch and Betty Willis's angel on her fluted column, open until 2011 and demolished in 2015. Rebuilt from Google Street View of 2007 to 2014, 2011 aerials, UNLV's 1986 slides and Rolando Pujol's photos of the restored angel and sign, and shown at dusk in 1986: the arch traced from rectified panoramas, the MOTEL pylon, the crescent street sign, the rooftop neon and the angel, the pool and the street around them.