Website Updates: Mid-Century Modern (part 1)

I had a fantastic, five-week roadtrip to the South and got back a week ago. I posted a sampling of photos each night at Instagram if you’d like to check it out:
https://www.instagram.com/roadarch_com/

Before I proceed with blog posts about the trip and adding about 4,000 new photos to my website, I’m going to polish off this grueling annual project of updating my website descriptions with all the good news (rare) & bad news (mostly) from the maps and cleaning up any dead external links. This is the only section left but it will probably take several weeks. So, hang in there! Loads of current photos of all the stuff that survives is coming!

The “A” states went unscathed but there are some noteworthy updates to the California pages. This former Fremont Bank (in Fremont) was demolished around 2020:

This San Diego County Courthouse building was demolished in 2020. A new courthouse building had been built earlier:

The Aztec mosaic created by Max Tuttle on this office building (originally, the Barkley Building) in North Hollywood has been painted. Here are a couple of my “before” photos:

Here’s what it looks like at Google Street View as of 2020. It’s now black & white and the panels on the sides of the building have been painted black. I’ll hold off full-on judgement until I see it in person but this looks awful and I much prefer the previous brown:

This wonderful little building in San Jose was demolished in 2020:

These interior light fixtures appeared to be original:

From the car wash mid-century subsection at my website… The Sparkle Car Wash in San Bernardino was repainted around 2019. I think this is actually an improvement. But the remaining, little ballies at the tops of the fins were removed which makes me very sad. The “before”:

The “after”:

The Madison Car Wash in West Hollywood was demolished in 2020. It must have been a Mister Car Wash originally.:

The fins would have had flags like this one in Houston, TX (flags gone now):

and a sign like this with a lantern integrated in the pole at the same Houston location (sign remodeled):

I don’t believe there are any Mister Car Washes that have the scripty text or lanterns. They seem to all have the boring current branding with blue backgrounds. Some of you roadside experts might recognize the company name as the one that, in recent years, bought out most of the Octopus Car Washes and removed the super cute octopus statues:

The Beach-Lin Car Wash in Anaheim was demolished in 2020. At least the same design (originally National Car Wash) survives in North Hollywood, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View:

No recent losses for Colorado, Delaware, or DC but here’s one for Connecticut (yes, the mcm section is organized in alpha order by state). The former Conty’s Drive-in in Bridgeport was mostly vacant for the last 15 years or so. It was demolished around 2019: