| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-11-01 | | Series: | The Road and American Culture |
| Size | | Length: | 387 pages | | Height: | 10.5 in | | Width: | 7.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 36.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
In The Motel in America, John Jakle, Keith Sculle, and Jefferson Rogers take an informative and entertaining look at the history, architecture, and business of motels in the United States. Like Jakle and Sculle's acclaimed The Gas Station in America, this book explores the effect on American culture as citizens became motorists. The new breed of automobile traveler rejected the hotels of the railroad era, which were located in congested downtown areas and lacked adequate parking. Instead, they came to favor the roadside lodgings outside city limits which came to be known as motels, a term first used in Arthur Heineman's Milestone Mo-tel, opened in San Luis Obispo, California, in 1926. The popularity of motels grew steadily throughout the century, booming after the Second World War and reaching a peak in 1961, when there were some 61,000 motels operating throughout the country, the vast majority of them independently owned. These motels were an integral part of the American landscape, shaping their guests' ideas about modern living, introducing Americans to the consumer novelties of the age: color televisions, automatic coffee makers, shag rugs, even residential swimming pools. By the 1980s, most of the country's 40,000 motel establishments were affiliated with referral and franchise chains, reflecting the traveler's need for uniform quality and the entrepreneur's desire for regional or national recognition. The history of the motel, from autocamp to franchise, has long been overlooked. Although motels have come to be taken for granted, they illustrate much that is central to the American experience. In The Motel in America, motels at last receive the careful interpretation they deserve.
In roadside tent camps, in shacks, in cabins, and in the structures we recognize today in pink motels called the Flamingo, Spanish-style lodgings called El Rancho or Casa Grande, the golden-crowned Best Western, the green and orange Holiday Inn ("Kids stay free!"), and the blue-bannered Motel 6 ("We'll leave a light on")Americans and their cars have found homes on the road. Motels came to be places where guests were introduced to novelties. In the motel, many Americans saw their first color television, their first coffeemaker, their first shag rug, their first indirect lighting. In The Motel in America, John Jakle, Keith Sculle, and Jefferson Rogers take an informative, entertaining look at the history, architecture, business, and growth of motels in the U.S. Like Jakle and Sculle's acclaimed The Gas Station in America, this book considers what happened to American culture as its citizens became motorists. If automobiles were private containers for movement, the authors argue, motels became places for pause--equally private, equally public.As they developed as commercial enterprises, took form as architectural expression, and evolved within the place-product-packaging concept along America's highways, motels also molded Americans' ideas about residence and home. Travelers' rejection of hotels, located in congested downtown areas and lacking adequate parking, prompted the rapid rise of roadside lodging outside city limits: cabin courts, cottage courts, motor courts, motor inns, and eventually highway hotels. By whatever name, motels rapidly increased in number through the 1930s, and then again in the two decades after World War II, reaching their peak in the early 1960s, when about 61,000 motels operated in the United States. In 1962, fewer than 2 percent of all motel establishments were affiliated with franchise lodging chains. By 1987, 64 percent of the country's motels were part of these networks. Illustrated with more than 230 photographs, maps, and drawings, The Motel in America contains a wealth of colorful anecdotes and detail: • Ellsworth M. Statler, a Buffalo restaurateur who built a temporary 2,000-room hotel of wood and plaster for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, later founded the first chain of inexpensive hotels in New York State, advertising "a room with bath for a dollar and a half." • Because the first auto camps attracted a large number of unemployed transients -- who, like the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath, often lingered for weeks or months -- municipal camp operators in the 1920s began to impose entrance fees, charge for firewood, and enforce strict limitations on length of stay (measures which attracted the attention of commercial entrepreneurs). • Among the cabin camps competing for tourist dollars in the early 1930s, the Red Hat Tourist Camp in Baxley, Georgia, featured a menagerie with a soda-drinking black bear, a monkey, an alligator, and a flock of peacocks.
Industry Reviews
This study follows Jakle and Sculle's prior work The Gas Station in America. The authors sought to describe the maturation of the motel industry, which they consider peculiarly American in character, although they do not explore the motel outside the borders of the US. . . . The book is well researched, superbly illustrated with photographs and maps, and almost encyclopedic in its scope. Although aware of many of the sociological aspects of motel culture, the authors surprisingly fail to consider the ethnic dimensions of motel entrepreneurship, particularly among Indian immigrants. Recommended.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Riess
Recognizing that the early history of the motel has been chronicled elsewhere, most notably by Warren Belasco in Americans on the Road (1979), the authors focus on the post-World War II years. The core of the book charts the demise of family-owned establishments at the hands of highly capitalized corporations. . . . For all the authors' claims about cultural significance, this book is primarily a business history. Coverage of the industry is exhaustive; the book contains capsule histories of virtually every motel chain. . . . The research is drawn from industry trade journals; the cast of characters consists of those individuals responsible for innovations in motel design, service, and financing. The lodgers' perspective is largely absent. . . . Readers will appreciate the rich illustrations that supplement the text. Floor plans, postcards, and photographs effectively document the evolution of architectural prototypes. . . . [The authors] have produced the definitive work on motels in the post-World War II era.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Hurley
This is the definitive history of the motel. Until now, roadside lodging has been treated primarily by writers interested in the 'great man' stories of such leaders as Conrad Hilton, . . . or by authors nostalgic for the picturesque small businesses of the pre-World War II era. . . . [In this title, the authors] succeed in creating a highly engaging, multifaceted work that touches nearly every aspect of the hostelry business from the dawn of the twentieth century to the present. [It] is part of an emerging field in historical scholarship, the 'history of the built environment,' which melds business history with architectural history, cultural geography, and social history. . . . Business historians may wish that [the authors] had delved even deeper into the financing strategies that shape the corporate roadside. . . . The authors themselves suggest other area deserving more discussion. . . . Other scholars will undoubtedly pick up these trails, now that they can build on the solid historical base provided [here].
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Hanchett
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