Featured image credit: Chalmers Butterfield Here in the post-internet world, it’s hard to recall just how dramatically the automobile changed the country. Few American cities felt the cultural impact quite like Los Angeles. The arrival of the family car in Southern California created fertile ground for a series of architectural movements with none more over-the-top than programmatic architecture. Sometimes referred to as novelty or mimetic architecture, programmatic architecture was a style for people who thought Googie was too subtle. Why guide passing motorists to your car wash with glowing arrows when you could demand their attention by shaping your car wash like a giant soap bubble? This was the philosophy that drove one of the most otherworldly design styles of the modern era. What You See is What You Get Photo credit: YaGeek The golden era of programmatic architecture, particularly in Southern California, spanned from 1918 until 1941, roughly the decades betw