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The best coin-op laundries are in their own, free-standing buildings, like the Sunbrite on 34th Street. In small, out-of-the-way towns, a place like the Sunbrite may have offered people their first up-close experience with modern architecture and Modernist ideas. The building is mostly windows, which flood the place with light during the day. This isn't some dingy, claustrophobic laundromat. It's clean and bright, and by extension, so is your laundry. At night, the walls disappear, and the bright interior spills out on the street: the building is its own billboard. The transparent facade also offers late-night launderers a sense of security. The Sunbrite even has fake stone walls, something you see on lots of Googie-style diners and coffee shops from the Fifties. Lubbock doesn't have any Atomic Age diners, but it's got the Sunbrite.
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