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Mike's Famous Roadside Rest

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1997–1998, Joseph Chickadel for Design Collaborative Inc. DE 9 and I-295
  • Mike's Famous Roadside Rest (W. Barksdale Maynard)
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)

The award-winning, 40,000-square-foot retail complex strategically positioned along a busy highway at the approaches to the Delaware Memorial Bridge (NC3) combines a Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership, restaurant, and museum, built around an existing Howard Johnson motel registration booth. Market studies were carried out to determine what visitors would potentially like to see. Various themes were combined: old warehouses, Art Deco design, oversized signage, and Route 66 nostalgia. Extensive use was made of reclaimed materials: 100-year-old yellow pine flooring, bricks from abandoned buildings, a wooden steam shovel. Seats and doors were made from machine-part molds. The result is some of the most theatrical architecture in Delaware.

Writing Credits

Author: 
W. Barksdale Maynard
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Data

What's Nearby

Delaware Health and Social Services Herman M. Holloway Sr. Campus (Delaware State Hospital)
Chapel
Delaware Memorial Bridge
Fort Casimir Site
Old Library

Citation

W. Barksdale Maynard, "Mike's Famous Roadside Rest", [New Castle, Delaware], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/DE-01-NC2.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Delaware

Buildings of Delaware, W. Barksdale Maynard. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008, 148-148.

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