AA-2026-04F49F
On the image
Someone decided that a supermarket parking lot needed a landmark, and the fix was a towering painted totem pole planted on a traffic island like a civic monument. It borrows a Pacific Northwest Indigenous form to advertise groceries in what is very obviously flat, wooded, non-coastal country, the kind of confident cultural mash-up that passed for showmanship at a 1960s shopping plaza.
Across the lot the Food Mart sign does the actual selling, while a pagoda-roofed pavilion adds a second borrowed motif, because if one exotic flourish draws customers, two must draw more. The cars nosed into their spaces are the compact, chrome-trimmed sedans of the decade, parked with the unhurried confidence of people who expected the lot to still be there in twenty years.
Nobody in the photograph seems to find the totem pole strange, which is the real historical document here. It was simply what commercial optimism looked like before anyone asked whether the roadside needed quite so many souvenirs of places none of this was.
The historian's note
Roadside commercial architecture in North America during the 1960s frequently used exaggerated or borrowed decorative elements as a form of visual marketing, intended to catch the eye of passing motorists on newly built highway corridors. Totem-pole motifs, pagoda rooflines, and other stylized ornament were common devices used by shopping centers and supermarkets of this era, regardless of any regional or cultural connection to the imagery employed.
The scene depicts a small commercial plaza anchored by a Food Mart-branded supermarket, a type of chain grocery store that expanded rapidly in suburban and highway-adjacent locations during the postwar period. The parking lot, landscaped traffic island, and pavilion structure are typical of mid-century strip-mall design, which prioritized automobile access and visible signage over architectural coherence.
The automobiles present, along with the design vocabulary of the buildings and signage, are consistent with the 1960s dating assigned to this scene.
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Visually related — by likeness
Totem Pole and Food Mart Plaza, Roadside America, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-04F49F. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/totem-pole-and-food-mart-plaza-roadside-america-1960s.
@misc{aaAA202604F49F,
title = {Totem Pole and Food Mart Plaza, Roadside America, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-04F49F},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/totem-pole-and-food-mart-plaza-roadside-america-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Totem Pole and Food Mart Plaza, Roadside America, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-04F49F UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/totem-pole-and-food-mart-plaza-roadside-america-1960s ER -
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