Photo essay: Philadelphia-based photographer Mark Havens has captured the Modernist architecture and neon signage of motels in a New Jersey resort town, just before many were lost to condominium development (+ slideshow).
Havens ? a professor at Philadelphia University ? spent his summers in the coastal resort of Wildwood, which contains the "highest concentration of Mid-century Modern commercial architecture in America".
The town's 1950s and 1960s motels are only used three months out of the year, so have remained largely unchanged for four decades.
But noticing that they were starting to disappear to make way for giant condominiums, Havens felt the need to document the "architectural treasures" before time ran out. He explains his motivation, process and urgency to ensure their legacy in this essay written exclusively for Dezeen. A wider selection of the images are collated into a book titled Out of Season: The Vanishing Architecture of the Wildwoods, published by Booth-Clibborn Editions and available now.

For as long as I can remember, Wildwood has meant summertime to me. So many of my summers played out against the backdrop of the island's unique motels that the buildings seemed as unchangeable as mountains. But several years ago, amid a rush of condominium development, these noted cultural and architectural treasures began to disappear at an almost unbelievable rate.

So I set out to create a visual record of the motels before they were demolished ...