Lincoln Highway, or Interstate 30, became in 1913 the first highway to link both coasts of the United States. It runs from New York's Times Square to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. This route in many ways opened the eyes of Americans to the possibilities of the car, which soon replaced the railway as a means of transportation over long distances. It was on the side of the Lincoln Highway and other key highways in the first half of the 20th century that specific architectural types arose: café diners, motels, gas stations, and entertainment establishments aimed at travelers.
A museum of this highway is to appear in Pennsylvania, where the 200-kilometer stretch of highway N 30 has monument status. The authors of the project will be Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, who were the first to see the architectural potential and peculiar aesthetics of not only Las Vegas, but also High Street - the main street of an ordinary city, where most of the shops and institutions are concentrated, a street that is usually part of the city that runs through the city. major highway. It should be noted that the customers, the Pennsylvanian non-profit organization Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor, based in the town of Ligoner, turned to Venturi by accident, initially without knowing anything about the merits of the leading theorist of postmodernism.
The project of the future museum develops the usual typology of a roadside shop or cafe - this is a hangar-shaped building, behind the glass facade of which a huge signboard - "postcard" will be installed, clearly visible to those passing along the Lincoln Highway: this road passes 30 meters from the building site. The content of the museum will be in the spirit of Las Vegas (and the ideals of Venturi): restored "monuments" - a gas station, two bungalows from a roadside motel and a Serro’s Diner cafe (1938), where visitors can dine, will be exhibited. Also among the exhibits will be various cars, the reconstruction of the main street of an ordinary American town of the mid-20th century, etc. The museum complex will include an auditorium, a library and administrative premises. The total construction area will be about 1000 sq. m.
