Here’s another collection of vintage postcards featuring some neat modernist hotels and motels from yesteryear. Most images are from nighttime, with a few dusk shots included as well. Regardless, all are nicely lit, thanks to a good deal of neon. Plus, there’s plenty of the period’s eye-grabbing signage.
Our first postcard is the Laurel Motor Inn, in San Francisco.
Sea Mist Motel and Apartments, Norfolk, VA.
Flamingo Motel, Hallandale Beach, FL.
The Manger Motor Inn, Indianapolis, IN.
Astromotel, Pasadena, CA.
City Centre Motor Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Space Age Lodge, Anaheim, CA.
Beachcomber Resort Motel, Miami Beach, FL.
Monteeagle Restaurant & Motel, Tennessee.
Used to be many hotels like above along the Florida Emerald Coast. My family, and later in high school, stayed at a few.
Today, most hotels look the same. Only difference is the corporate logo.
Space Age Lodge in CA, that rocket ship looks like it was tied to the top of that VW wagon!
I believe it is .
I instantly recognized the Astromotel in Pasadena, right on Colorado Blvd.
-Nate
I liked the Astromotel one so much I looked it up on Google maps, don’t believe that tree is the same one that is there now, the present one in gnarly and is huge, it spoils the look of it a bit
Very much out of favour today, but looked at in their time and place they look the future. Funny how things date so quickly.
I did stay in the Space Age Lodge, but in Gila Bend, Arizona, not Anaheim location.
Some of these places are still standing. The Laurel Motor Inn in San Francisco is still even operating under its original name.
Here’s a then-and-now comparison of the City Centre Motor Hotel in Winnipeg – still operating there, but under a different name. From what I can tell, it’s now a motel catering to people from rural communities who are receiving healthcare services in Winnipeg.
StreetView link:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/obaUZpv4uihQ2iGa9
Yes, Laurel is still on Presdio between California and Sacramento.
I was in the Navy in 1970 and had an apartment across the street from the Sea Mist motel in Norfolk. I did not see the Caddy and Olds over there though 😔
Great article. I remember seeing the Astro motel in ’88. We’re just back from a Canada/USA road trip and if the motel looks like Mid Century, I usually try to trace it’s history.
No luck this time. Our last trip was more sucessful. A Motel 6 was a former Thunderbird Inn, and our Denver Super 8 was the Continental Motor Inn.
The last image of Monteeagle Restaurant & Motel in Tennessee is very similar the the Lowry Ave bridge in North Minneapolis, MN by my house. Here it is lit up in purple in remembrance of Prince as he grew up here.
Interestingly enough, that bridge-looking structure was an addition to the Monteagle Motel. Below is an image from the 1950s that shows that motel without it:
Here a vintage photo of Hotel (later Motel) Le Baron on West King Street in Sherbrooke.
https://www.facebook.com/207295232804246/photos/a.207307842802985/1841153219418431/?type=3&locale=hi_IN
It was demolished in 2014 for a commercial complex, here the last StreeView from May 2013. https://maps.app.goo.gl/1Qy6DhToPwSGtaWX6
I remember the Space Age motel in Anaheim. My family stayed there when we went to Disneyland in ’76, after Dad retired from the US Army. His last assignment was Scholfield Barracks in Hawaii. I remember the Space Age motel was “surrounded” by topiary trees, or trees that were groomed into various shapes and figures.