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| "Main Street is almost all right." — Robert Venturi |
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| Photo by Jerry Huddleston. |
I've always loved motels. They were what I looked forward to most of all on family car trips (aside from for root-beer-and-burger chow-downs at A&W).
Yeah, I know. Cheap. Cheesy. Chintzy. Gaudy. Junky. Tacky. Trashy. Ugly. Baaaaad. Boring. Drab. Dull. Fake. Lowbrow. No class. No taste. No vacancy. Urban blight. Suburban sprawl. If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. Good for Joe Bag-o'-Donuts. Or Joe Six-pack. Or Johnny Smoke. Or a one-night stand. Or the Gideons. Or a towel to swipe from the bathroom.
So what merit can an architecture aficionado like me possibly see in a motel? I'll tell you. Class. Clean. Comfy-cozy. Convenient. Cushy. Cool (as long as the AC is on, the curtains are drawn and the blinds are down). And this seemingly sleepy Super 8 Motel down the road from me in Watertown, Massachusetts (below), is no exception. If I stayed here, I'd be...
HOME!
That's my gut reaction the moment I step into a motel room. No frills. No window-dressing. Just the basics. Beds. Lamps. Nightstand. Radiator. AC. TV. Wi-Fi. Window. Curtains. Cabinet. Carpet. Chairs. Table. Drawer (where Gideons' Bible pops out at you, whether you like it or not). Shower. Shampoo. Sink. Soap. Towels. Toilet. What more do you really need to live well?
That's what I love about motels — all the comforts of home with the clean lines of economy — the basic values we all long for in our living space (and where we'd stay forever, if we could afford it). But it's pointless to poeticize other Boston-area motels, for, as noted above, they're just like all the rest. So, to get some architectural ooh-aah in here, let's motor across America and see some motels made with more imagination...
Tom's territory
The Tom Sawyer Motor Inn was one of the first motels I ever stayed in as a kid — and where I first learned about Mark Twain's mischievous but memorable literary character. This one in Elmira, N.Y. (now the Mark Twain Motor Inn), stretches long across its lot, expressing its namesake's adventurous, freebooting wanderlust.
Star Lite stretch
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| Photo by White Writer. |
The Star Lite Motel in Dilworth, Minnesota, is the quintessence of streamlined motel design: horizontal, one story, stretching all the way down its site to line up all its rooms in a row conveniently for cars, so it's a snap to park, check in, unload, unlock, change, brush, and sleep. For this is what a "motel" is: a MOtorist's hoTEL, one-stop off-the-road, into-bed convenience, no stairs to climb, no elevators to take.
Sunset's salutation
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| Photo by Gorup de Besanez, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
This Sunset Motel on Route 66 in Villa Ridge, Missouri, gives guests a double welcome: by its neon sign right on the road (a way virtually all motels lure roadsters in for the night) and by the open-armed layout of its building, which is accented with gables reminiscent of regional architecture, presenting itself as a place to call home, if only for a night.
Cactus comfort
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| Photos by Gorup de Besaanez, courtsy of Wikimedia Commons. |
The Cactus Inn Motel in McLean, Texas, capitalizes big-time on the desert image of its south-to-southwest location in the U.S. (as well as its own hot, dry area) to hook in guests.
Given a cactus's association with a climate that's generally too arid and torrid to live in (it can go without water for a long time), as well as its painfully prickly feel to the touch, I'll never know how the cactus can be so appealing, unless its green color, as used on its sign, roof and room doors, is the lure.
Or perhaps the image of the desert as unspoiled, open land that can be pioneered on, with the great natural beauty of sand, rocks and mountains, is a temptation. Besides, air conditioning and workable curtains and Venetian blinds are a given in a hotel, where you can enjoy your desert daydreams in the comforts of home.
Speaking of deserts...
Desert Sands' delight
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| Photo by John Phelan, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
A roadside sign is often catchier than a motel, as the way the owner hopes to hook the motorist off the road. This Albuquerque, New Mexico motel has a touch of Vegas in its signage, generating an image of the warm comfort of desert sands – though the shade from the balcony and roof and the AC you're virtually guaranteed in your room will make sure your sleep doesn't feel like a desert!
Straight as an arrow
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| Photo by Afiler from Seattle, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
Another attention-grabber sign, on a straight-as-an-arrow strip in Gallup, New Mexico, where two 'LODGE' motels vie for equal time. The more Vegas-y the strip, the more Vegas-y the sign must be, for roadside prominence (see my first image). That was what Venturi meant when he said, "Main Street is almost all right" – competing signage makes up a colorful strip.
Sleepy teepee
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| Photo by Raleigh Muns. |
This Route 66 curiosity, Wigwam Motel No. 6 in Holbrook, Arizona, gives guests the illusion of cozying in a wigwam, luring them off the road with a familiar Indian folklore image from childhood. Since I had a backyard teepee tent as a kid, I'd tell Dad to stop here in an instant. Fake or not, at least these cabins are freestanding, which means no next-door noise.
Macie's Motel
This motel in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, pictured in the 1950s, typifies the "L" layout many motels were designed in, to allot as large a driveway/parking area as possible for a multitude of cars and maximum clearance for cars to get off the road. The freestanding cabins gave people a quieter option, so they wouldn't be subject to next-door noise, akin to what Susie Vargas (Janet Leigh) had to put up with from Uncle Joe Grandi's wild bebop/jazz party in the abutting room at the remote desert motel in Orson Welles' 1958 film Touch of Evil.
Speaking of Hollywood motels...
Bates' bane
This is fictitious, of course – a Universal Studios stage set – but it happens to be the notorious Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller Psycho, whose owner may have gotten some ideas from the sexually perverted motel night clerk in Touch of Evil, the late film critic Roger Ebert surmised.
If you happen to have seen Psycho, you know well what happens in this modest, lowly, innocent-looking motel complex, being watched over by the ominous Mansard-roofed mansion uphill, as a fitting symbol of the social exploitation and sexual voyeurism motels have been the subject of in movies, owing in part to their "nobody watching" isolation on the American landscape.
Lorraine's legacy
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| Photo by DavGreg, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
This former motel in Memphis, Tennessee, is now part of the National Civil Rights Museum, based on the real tragedy that took place here on April 4, 1968: the murder of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was staying at the Lorraine Motel, in Room 306, while he was planning protests centered around the Memphis sanitation strike that was taking place at the time.
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| Photo by Bubba73, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
The building has been preserved as it was at the moment of King's assassination while he stood on the balcony, complete with a 1968 Cadillac and a 1959 Dodge that were parked below at the time, highlighting the importance of cars in a motel's design, as well as the frozen-in-time preservation of a memory of the event.
(The ring-buoy wreath marks the approximate spot where King was standing when he was shot.)
Vacancy
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| An abandoned motel in the desert along Route 66. |
Sorry to wrap up on such a sour note, but it goes to show that motels should be checked out with caution. They tend to be so isolated, as places to go off a long, lonely road for a rest, that the comforts of home they offer do not make them safe havens to hide from what one never knows can happen there, from mayhem to murder to abandonment.
Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!
Sources:
If you answered 'no' to any of the above—'cause either you weren't around back then or this kind of kitsch was just not that into you—these are examples of the Toot-a-Loop Crazy Color Radio, aka Panasonic R-72. People found it groovy, not so much for its sound (which was far from hi-fi, and was AM only), but for its portability, wearability, and twistability ("It's an S, it's an O, it's a crazy ra-di-o!" went its Mary Poppinsy jingle—though you had to twist it open to adjust the dial). Others dug its donut-hole familiarity, sensuous curves, and novel look and feel compared to the "square" transistor radios with the telescopic antennae they were getting bored of listening to on the beach.
