The rise and fall of American motels

1939 when john steinbeck imagined route 66 as a "flying road", he evoked the bitter reality that immigrants were pushed off the land by crop failures, ruthless dust and ruthless river banks during the Great Depression. These environmental and economic refugees are trying to find the feeling of home on the road and looking for hope against the background of unfathomable losses. On the way to California, they rested and recuperated in the surplus tents of the army, and hastily built the camp of the Ministry of Communications and the Sears roebuck Chicken House.

It is hard for them to imagine the surreal indulgence of tourist roads that began to appear after World War II: renting a room that is built into a country villa and decorated with plastic flowers; Take pictures of neon cactus shining through half-closed curtains; Sleeping in a concrete tent of Native American culture.

In short, they could never foresee the rise of roadside motels.

After its heyday in the mid-20th century, traditional couple motels used to be everywhere on roads and trails in the United States-to a great extent, this exceeded the public's imagination.

Nowadays, road travelers usually prefer to have a professional website to ensure fast internet connection and convenient interstate accommodation, leave the old motels built along two-lane highways and numbered highways and go to the seeds.

As Mark Oakland wrote in No Vacancy: The Rise, Death and Reprint of American Motels, there were about 65,438+06,000 motels in operation in 2065,438+02, which was significantly lower than the peak of 665,438+0964. In the next few years, this number will definitely fall further.

Even so, efforts to protect maternal and child motels-especially along the "Best expressway" route 66-show that many historians and motorists are eager to find some motels spirit that has not completely disappeared.

In front of the motel … farmer's field "If you want to know about America, you must go your own way."

In the first 30 years of the 20th century, America consolidated its love for cars. For the first time, most people, regardless of their struggle and status in life, can jump on the bus, get on the road and escape from the places and environments that bind them.

Of course, there are few conveniences for interstate travelers nowadays. In western Mississippi, camping is the most common choice, not expensive hotels. For those drivers who don't want to wear road clothes through the stuffy hall, convenient and anonymous fields or lakeshore are an attractive choice.

Back in the east, the tourist home provides another choice for the hotel. If you look around dusty attics or antique shops, you can still find cardboard signs advertising "tourist rooms". For example, an advertisement for a temporary tourist home in Ocean City, Maryland reads "Room, running water, take a bath from the room". Apartment, modern conveniences. Special prices after April, May, June and Labor Day.

Temporary tourist homes in Ocean City, Maryland (provided by the author), because tourist homes are often located in towns, unlike most modern motels, they are usually located near expressway, far from the city center. However, every tourist home is as unique as its owner. At this point, they contributed to a core tradition of American motels: husband and wife ownership.

Fill up your tank and have a bite. With the end of the Great Depression, it became profitable to provide more facilities than campsites. Farmers or businessmen will sign contracts with oil companies to install fuel pumps and then build several shacks. Some are prefabricated, others are handmade-rickety, but primitive. In the book American Motel, the author illustrates a typical "cabin camping" trip:

"At the U-Smile log cabin camp ... the guests who arrive sign at the registration office and then pay. No cabin, a dollar rented mattress; Two people rent a mattress for twenty-five cents more, and blankets, sheets and pillows for fifty cents more. The manager took the guests to their cabin on a treadmill. Each guest can get a bucket of water from the outdoor fire hydrant and a bucket of firewood in winter. By the 1930s and 1940s,

Farmhouse courtyard (also known as tourist courtyard) has become a classic substitute for dirty hut camp. Each hut is designed according to the theme of "country" or "pasture", and most of them are built around public lawns. The English village on the east side of White Mountain in New Hampshire advertised: "These bungalows are modern and like home, attracting thousands of tourists. They visited this scenic spot in Franconia Notch. "

A postcard depicts the English village (Cattle) in eastern New Hampshire, which is different from hotels in the city center. The stadium is designed to be car-friendly. You can park your car next to the private room or under the parking lot. As gas stations, restaurants and cafes began to appear in these roadside havens.

Saunders Courtyard and Cafe in Corbin, Kentucky, advertised "complete air conditioning with tiled bathroom", carpet floor, "perfect sleeper" bed, air conditioning, steam heating, radio in every room, open all year round. Yes, these foods include fried chicken developed by the famous Colonel Harlan Sanders of KFC.

With the rise of motels in 1930s and 1940s, the owners of individual log cabin camps and log cabin courtyards, known as courtiers, dominated the transactions of roadside safe havens (except Lee torrance and his fledgling Alamo court chain). Then, during World War II, almost everything related to road trip was limited, and tires, gasoline and leisure time were expensive. However, many troops deployed overseas have seen some places in the United States and want to revisit these places after returning home. After the war, President dwight david eisenhower was frustrated by the difficulty in moving tanks around the country, and promoted a plan to imitate German expressway: the federal interstate expressway system. But the first of these four lanes will take 10 years to build. Before that, the family set foot on all available roads-cruising on the winding roads in the country. They can easily visit small towns and landmarks as long as it suits them.

At night, they found that the garage-no longer an isolated hut, but a fully integrated building under a single roof-was illuminated by neon lights and was a genius in design. They will soon be called "motels", which was named by the owner of Milestone Mo Tel Company in San Luis Obispo, California.

Although the motel room is simple and practical, its facade adopts a regional style (and occasionally has a stereotype). The host used plaster, adobe, stones and bricks-anything convenient-to attract guests.

After the war, many families flocked to and from other stations in expressway, USA, and many owners settled down and worked all their lives.

Roy Motel and Cafe, Amboy, California, along the route 66 (photographer Nature /Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA), the good times will not last long. In 1950s and 1960s, interstate highways built to bypass the crowded downtown began to meander across the country. Soon, chain stores like Holiday Inn eliminated small parking lots, blurring the difference between motels and hotels. Single-layer structure gives way to double-layer and three-layer structure. The excitement of discovering the unique look and feel of roadside motels was replaced by the same guarantee from owners from different coasts.

Today, most travelers use the interstate highway system, and few people go out of their way to look for Ayers Motel on the roadside. Few people remember the traditions of dictators and tourist courts. However, more and more conservation associations and brave cultural explorers began to set foot on the exit, and once again set foot on the original road-exploring the remains of route 66, Highway 40 and US 1-looking for a unique experience near the bend.

There's nowhere to run. You can say that this decline has lost something in modern American life: friction, distance and character. In my book Ubiquitous Cities: Places, Exchanges and Ubiquitous Rise, I wrote that the definition of a country is not so much tourism as an illusion, that is, one person can gather all over the world-the whole world is the same reliable part, at least, swimming in a safe internal environment without fear of accidents.

The same fortress: Now thousands of holiday hotels are dotted with American scenery (meshal alawadhi/flickr), which is interesting and satisfying to some extent. But something is missing. I don't have to call it "authenticity", but we can imagine that motels-past and present-represent a pleasant and strange free fantasy: a way to escape from the constantly flowing and effortlessly connected global continuum. Andrew Wood, a professor of communication at San Jose State University, said that this is a departure from daily life, in which travelers can still create a new role, a new past and a new destination.