Legacy of the Golden Arches

Highbrows celebrate lowbrow fast-food architecture
By Kurt Andersen

Time Magazine, June 2, 1986, U.S. Edition, Pg. 71
[Brief excerpt]


To orthodox historic preservationists, it seems perverse to make instant history out of the immediate past....

In the 1960s, when the space-age future finally arrived, futuristic imagery was abandoned.... The new buildings were low slung, brownish, plastered with brick veneer. The exuberance of the late '40s and '50s architecture was replaced by bland pseudohomeyness in the '60s and '70s. Bad good taste supplanted good bad taste.