Motel Monday: Seeing Red

This week's Motel Monday theme is motels with "Red" in the title somewhere. There's a variety of things from American Indians, fruit, horses, arrows, and shingles that can only be described as red.

All postcards from my collection. You can see my other blog, In The Heart of Downtown, to see my entire posted collection of over 2,500 different motels.

Red Feather Lodge - Grand Canyon, Arizona

Red Apple Motel - Yakima, Washington

Red Carpet Inn - Stateline, California

Motel Monday: Come Sea About Me

This week's Motel Monday features motels with the word "Sea" in the title. A lot of these names make sense for the location, but some are just way off. I am pretty sure there aren't many sea shell in Lordsburg, New Mexico or sea breezes in Phoenix.

All the postcards are from my collection. You can see my entire (posted) collection of nearly 2,500 different motels at In the Heart of Downtown.

Sea Dip Motel and Apartments - Daytona Beach, Florida

The Sea Horse - Daytona Beach, Florida

Motel Monday: The Orange Roof

This weeks Motel Monday theme is all about Howard Johnson's Motor Lodges. Howard Johnson's was originally a restaurant and then expanded successfully (until the late 1970s) into the Motel Business. They are still a chain of hotels all of the globe but these postcards are dedicated to their motel past and their signature orange A-framed roof. See all 12 images after the jump.

Here's a little history (from Wikipedia):

By 1954, there were 400 Howard Johnson's restaurants in 32 states. About 10% were company-owned turnpike restaurants that were extremely profitable. The rest were franchises.

Also that year, the company decided to open the first Howard Johnson's motor lodge in Savannah, Georgia. The company employed architects Rufus Nims and Karl Koch to oversee the design of the rooms and gate lodge. Nims had previously worked with the company to design Howard Johnson's restaurants. The restaurant's trademark simple Simon and Pieman was now joined by a lamplighter character in the firm's marketing of its motels. According to cultural historians, the chain became synonymous with travel among American motorists and vacationers in part because of Johnson's ubiquitous outdoor advertising displays.

In 1959, Howard Deering Johnson, who had founded and managed the company since 1925, turned the reins over to his son, then 26-year-old Howard Brennan Johnson. Howard Deering Johnson would observe his son's control of the company until his death in 1972. He died at the age of 76.

By 1961, the year the Howard Johnson's Company went public, there were 605 restaurants, 265 of them company owned and 340 franchised, as well as 88 franchised Howard Johnson's motor lodges in 32 states and the Bahamas.

In 1961, Johnson hired famed New York chefs Pierre Franey and Jacques Pépin to oversee food development at the company's main commissary in Brockton, Massachusetts. Franey and Pépin developed recipes for the company's signature dishes that could be flash frozen and delivered across the country, guaranteeing a consistent product.

Haverhill, Massachusetts

Ithaca, New York