Many con­nois­seurs of archi­tec­ture are enthralled by the mod­ernist phi­los­o­phy of Le Cor­busier , Frank Lloyd Wright , and I M Pei , who shared a belief that form fol­lows func­tion, or, as Wright had it, that form and func­tion are one. Oth­ers of us delight in gas sta­tions shaped like teapots and restau­rants shaped like fish or dough­nuts . If there’s a phi­los­o­phy behind these insis­tent­ly play­ful visions, it like­ly has some­thing to do with joy…and pulling in tourists. Art his­to­ri­an John Mar­golies  (1940–2016), respond­ing to the beau­ty of such quirky visions, scram­bled to pre­serve the evi­dence, trans­form­ing into a respect­ed, self-taught pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the process. A Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion grant and the finan­cial sup­port of archi­tect Philip John­son allowed him to log over four decades’ worth of trips on America’s blue high­ways, hop­ing to cap­ture his quar­ry before it dis­ap­peared for good.…