Artist Norman Rockwell’s illustration “Marble Champ” beautifully depicts the intense competition of marble play. (Image courtesy of Etsy)

Sleeping under the neon

Finally, the new roadside motels and motor lodges, now multiple rooms under a single roof, replaced those quaint cottages of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Their roadside neon signs hummed and beckoned travelers with promises of amenities such as television and air conditioning. Modern conveniences, on-site eateries, a swimming pool, coupled with affordable rates – the motel had arrived.

“While motel rooms were plain and functional, the facades took advantage of regional styles (and, occasionally, stereotypes). Owners employed stucco, adobe, stone, brick – whatever was handy – to attract guests,” Wood writes. “With families swarming to and from the rest stops that multiplied along the highways of postwar America, many of the owners settled in for a life’s work.”

These motels quickly became the standard in comfort for American families out on their road trip adventure, enjoying decades of dominance in the booming hospitality industry. But as chain motels were being constructed with speed, these smaller, family-owned motels struggled to keep Americans’ favor – and their dollars.

Wood writes that as recently as a decade ago, classic roads such as Route 66 and the Las Vegas Strip suffered from a shockingly steep decline in these smaller mom-and-pop businesses, each of them unique and too many replaced with staid, soulless multi-level buildings that are the same regardless of the city in which you find yourself. In fact, as of 2012, only 16,000 of these small motels remained open and in business, a dramatic drop from the roadside motel’s peak of 61,000 in 1964.

Their place in history (and our memories)

Still, efforts remain to preserve some of the structures that remain, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“For someone who was a kid in the 1950s, ‘60s, or ‘70s, motels capture the way Americans traveled. Many motels have that Howard Johnson feel to them, and Midcentury Modern is becoming so popular again it is easy to reimagine these structures as swanky motels with farm-to-table restaurants and nice rooms,” architect Ashley Wilson told the organization in 2015.

Wilson said that although the motels themselves aren’t architecturally significant, their significance is cultural – many of them catered to African-American clientele during Segregation and were the only place such individuals could stay overnight, at least in the American South.

Besides their link to the Civil Rights movement, the motels will always hold distinct nostalgic appeal for the Baby Boomer generation.

“They represent the family vacation of the mid-20th century,” Wilson said. “All of us remember getting to the motel and then the kids all race to fill up the ice bucket. We remember the pool and ice cream in the restaurant. They trigger memories of parenting, being a child, and road trips in the un-air-conditioned station wagon.”

For others still, according to travel writer Hannah Henderson, these motels of decades past mean so much more.

“There is an inextricable connection between roadside motels and that sense of hope and opportunity that we chase on a cross-country road trip,” Henderson writes. “Some of our favourite memories involve sitting out on mismatched chairs on shared motel porches or stoops, watching traffic and people roll on by. Where are they heading? What are their stories? And do they have the same dreams as us?”