The Cellar - Dec 14th, 2018: Motel

♫The First Motel, the Angels did say
♪To certain poor shepherds in fields they won’t lay
♫No fields where they lay, keeping their sheep
♪On a cold winter's night they’re getting so deep

Oh yes, motels, some of the best and worst nights of my life. Friends said some were low life sluts but they were all ladies to me.
But even before my hits & misses, the motel has history.

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A long long time ago, in a state far far away…

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In December of 1925, the Spanish-revival doors of the Milestone Mo-Tel Inn swung open to motorists mid-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco, offering a luxurious overnight stay by any standards. In conceiving a name for his first hotel, untrained architect Arthur Heineman of Chicago, abbreviated “motor hotel” to “mo-tel” after realizing he couldn’t fit all 19 letters of “Milestone Motor Hotel” on his rooftop sign.

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He should have trademarked the word right then and there, yet for reasons unknown, he was unable to. The plan was to open a chain of motor inns around the country under the novel “motel” concept, but without that all-important trademark, his competitors quickly hijacked the idea. With bigger, brighter and cheaper copycat “motels” popping up nearby on Route 66, and the looming financial challenges of the Great Depression, Heineman’s legacy was doomed to become a mere footnote in history. Despite being the inventor and primary architect of the an American icon, Milestone Mo-Tel Inn would be the first and last motel Arthur Heineman would ever opened.

For $1.25 a night (around $17 today), motorists had access to cutting-edge conveniences. The anatomy of the motel was simple: cater to drivers and their cars by providing each customer with a garage space, laundry and shower facilities, and even a little grocery store– and above all, make it pretty. The bell tower was modeled after the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, handsome columns lined the halls, and, according to a 2014 article in The Tribune, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe even stopped there during their honeymoon.

The Milestone was a real testament to its name, offering a new breed of accessible luxury to the traveling Average Joe (and movie stars alike). But to really understand why it was such a novel concept, we need to look at what was available to road travelers before the motel came along…

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“A traveler arriving at night, or at any other time, need not climb out of his car and go into the office to register. Instead, the man in charge comes out to the car and one may register without leaving the car at all. That done, an escort is sent with the traveler to show him his rooms, his apartment or whatever kind of combination in rooms he wants.” – San Louis Obispo Telegram, 1925.

Twenty-five years after the conception of the first motel, the post-war economic expansion saw to it that by 1950, there were over 50,000 motels catering to millions of Americans during the golden age of travel. But things came to a halt with the Great Depression– which isn’t to say motor hotels went out of fashion– they just became less fancy. Arthur Heineman ultimately lost his motel, the world’s first, to foreclosure.

At its peak in the 1960s, the motel industry boasted 61,000 properties. In the past decade, the number of registered motels has fallen to as low as 16,000.

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That's what's coming.

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