God’s Own Junkyard is a book by Peter Blake about the planned deterioration of the American landscape.
This book was written in 1964.
The book shows photos of how the once beautiful streetscapes have changed over the years and how sad and awful they look at the time this book was written.
Same building circa 1935 versus 2022.
Today in the year 2022, 58 years after Peter Blake’s book was printed, Stephen Pellegrino posts a blog article about this book. He shows some of the street scenes in this book. Some of which have improved since the 1964 printing.
He makes a very good point stating:
In the early 1960’s, the “Old America”, (before modern architecture and the automobile) was still in the living memory of many people. Cities and town had a certain “Disney-like” picturesque quality, and rural scenes were pure and unspoiled.
The building and construction we are familiar with today exploded after WWII and this was shocking to people like Peter Blake.
Here is the full article written by Stephen Pellegrino in Curbside Classic.
Reading “God’s Own Junkyard” 58 Years Later
Here is the 1964 book available on Amazon
God’s Own Junkyard
The planned deterioration of America’s landscape
by Peter Blake
Ken,
Thanks for creating this post! You did an excellent job colorizing that 1930s Berenice Abbott photo of Kings Ale House in Brooklyn NY.
Did you know that President Trump by executive order wanted to protect classical architecture for federal buildings. However, President Biden revoked that order.
I did not know that. At least he did one thing good.