Wildwood Days: From Plastic Palm Trees To Looping Neon Signs, Striking Images Of Mid-Century Motels Capture The Vanishing Architecture Of A Bygone Era

Like many of the middle class South Philadelphians I grew up with, we vacationed in Wildwood, N.J. every summer.

As a child in the 1950s and early 1960s I went "downashore," as South Philadelphians called Wildwood, with my family. As a teenager in the mid and late 1960s, and in my 20s in the 1970s, I traveled to Wildwood with the guys or a girl friend.

In the 1980s, in my 30s, I and my wife began to take our children to Wildwood. And the last time we visited Wildwood, we went with our grown children and our grandchildren.

I've vacationed around the world, but Wildwood has a special place in my memories.

So I was interested in seeing the photos and reading Valerie Edwards' Daily Mail piece on a book on the old motels I know so well.

The book is Mark Havens' Out of Season: The Vanishing Architecture of the Wildwoods.

"Through a rare combination of economics, geography and chance, the island of Wildwood in New Jersey contains a national treasure: the highest concentration of mid-century modern hospitality architecture in the US," Edwards writes.

You can view the photos and read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3761339/From-plastic-palm-trees-looping-neon-signs-Striking-images-mid-century-motels-capture-vanishing-architecture-bygone-era.html

Note: You can read an earlier post on Wildwood via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2011/07/wildwood-days.html