A motel or motor lodge is a hotel designed for motorists and usually has a parking area for motor vehicles. Entering dictionaries after World War II, the word motel, coined as a portmanteau contraction of "motor hotel", originates from the Milestone Mo-Tel of San Luis Obispo, California (now called the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo), which was built in 1925.

1. Hotel Motel
A ​motel or motor​ lodge is a hotel designed for motorists and usually has
a parking area for motor vehicles. Entering dictionaries after World
War II, the word motel, coined as a portmanteau contraction of "motor
hotel", originates from the Milestone Mo-Tel of San Luis Obispo,
California (now called the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo), which was
built in 1925. The term referred initially to a type of hotel consisting of a
single building of ​connected rooms​ whose doors faced a parking lot and
in some circumstances, a common area or a series of small cabins with
common parking. Motels are often individually owned, though motel
chains do exist.

2. As large ​highway systems​ began to be developed in the 1920s,
long-distance road journeys became more common, and the need for
inexpensive, easily accessible overnight accommodation sites close to
the main routes led to the growth of the motel concept. Motels peaked
in popularity in the 1960s with rising car travel, only to decline in
response to ​competition ​from the newer chain hotels that became
commonplace at highway interchanges as traffic was bypassed onto
newly constructed freeways. Several historic motels are listed on the
US National Register of Historic Places.
Architecture
Motels differ ​from hotels in their location along highways, as opposed
to the urban cores favored by hotels, and their orientation to the
outside (in contrast to hotels, whose doors typically face an interior
hallway). Motels almost by ​definition ​include a parking lot, while older
hotels were not usually built with ​automobile ​parking in mind.
Because of their low-rise construction, the number of rooms which
would fit on any given amount of land was low compared to the
high-rise urban hotels which had grown around train stations. This was
not an issue in an era where the major highways became the main
street in every town along the way and inexpensive land at the edge of
town could be developed with motels, car dealerships, fuel stations,
lumber yards, ​amusement ​parks, roadside diners, drive-in restaurants,

3. theaters, and countless other small roadside businesses. The
automobile brought mobility and the motel could appear anywhere on
the vast network of two-lane highways.
Layout
Motels are typically​ constructed in an "I"-, "L"-, or "U"-shaped layout
that includes guest rooms; an attached manager's office; a small
reception; and in some cases, a small diner and a swimming pool. A
motel was typically single-story with rooms opening directly onto a
parking lot, making it easy to unload suitcases from a vehicle.​[2]​
A
second story, if present, would face onto a balcony served by multiple
stairwells.

4. The post-war ​motels, especially​ in the early 1950s to late 1960s, sought
more visual distinction, often featuring eye-catching colorful neon
signs which employed themes from popular culture, ranging from
Western imagery of cowboys and Indians to contemporary images of
spaceships and atomic era iconography. U.S. Route 66 is the most
popular example of the "neon era". Many of these signs remain in use to
this day.
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Room types
In some motels, a ​handful of rooms​ would be larger and contain
kitchenettes or apartment-like amenities; these rooms were marketed
at a higher price as "efficiencies" as their occupants could prepare food
themselves instead of ​incurring ​the cost of eating all meals in
restaurants. Rooms with connecting doors (so that two standard rooms
could be combined into one larger room) also commonly appeared in
both hotels and motels. A few motels (particularly in Niagara Falls,
Ontario​, where a motel strip extending from Lundy's Lane to the falls

5. has long been marketed to newlyweds) would offer "honeymoon suites"
with extra amenities such as whirlpool baths.
History
The first ​campgrounds ​for automobile tourists were constructed in the
late 1910s. Before that, tourists who couldn't afford to stay in a hotel
either slept in their cars or pitched their tents in fields alongside the
road. These were called auto camps. The modern campgrounds of the
1920s and 1930s ​provided running ​water, picnic grounds, and restroom
facilities.

6. Auto camps and courts
Auto camps predated motels by a few years, established in the 1920s as
primitive ​municipal ​campsites where travelers pitched their own tents.
As demand increased, for-profit commercial camps gradually displaced
public campgrounds.
Until the first travel trailers became available in the 1930s, auto tourists
adapted their cars by adding beds, makeshift kitchens and roof decks.
The next step up from the travel trailer was the cabin camp, a primitive
but permanent group of structures. During the Great Depression,
landholders whose property fronted onto highways built cabins to
convert unprofitable land to income; some opened tourist homes. The
(usually single-story) buildings for a roadside motel or cabin court were
quick and simple to construct, with plans and instructions readily
available in how-to and builder's magazines.
Expansion of highway networks largely continued unabated through
the depression as governments attempted to create employment but
the roadside cabin camps were primitive, basically just auto camps with
small cabins instead of tents.
The 1935 City Directory for San Diego, California, lists "motel"-type
accommodations under tourist camps. One initially could stay in the
Depression-era cabin camps for less than a dollar per night but small
comforts were few and far between.

7. Travelers in search of modern amenities soon would find them at
cottage courts and tourist courts. The price was higher but the cabins
had electricity, indoor bathrooms, and occasionally a private garage or
carport. They were arranged in attractive clusters or a U-shape. Often,
these camps were part of a larger complex containing a filling station, a
café, and sometimes a ​convenience ​store. Facilities like the Rising Sun
Auto Camp in Glacier National Park and BlueBonnet Court in Texas
were "mom-and-pop" facilities on the outskirts of towns that were as
quirky as their owners. Auto camps continued in popularity through the
Depression years and after World War II, their popularity finally
starting to diminish with increasing land costs and changes in
consumer demands.
In contrast, though they ​remained ​small independent operations,
motels quickly adopted a more homogenized appearance and were
designed from the start to cater purely to motorists.
Tourist homes
In town, tourist homes were private residences advertising rooms for
auto travelers. Unlike boarding houses, guests at tourist homes were
usually just passing through. In the southwestern United States, a
handful of tourist homes were opened by African-Americans as early as
the Great Depression due to the lack of food or lodging for travelers of
color in the Jim Crow conditions of the era.

8. There were things money couldn't buy on Route 66. Between Chicago
and Los Angeles you couldn't rent a room if you were tired after a long
drive. You couldn't sit down in a restaurant or diner or buy a meal no
matter how much money you had. You couldn't find a place to answer
the call of nature even with a pocketful of money...if you were a person
of color traveling on Route 66 in the 1940s and '50s.
The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936–64) listed lodgings, restaurants,
fuel stations, liquor stores, and barber and beauty salons without racial
restrictions; the smaller Directory of Negro Hotels and Guest Houses in
the United States (1939, U.S. Travel Bureau) specialized in
accommodations. Segregation of U.S. tourist accommodation would
legally be ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and by a court ruling in
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States affirming that Congress' powers

9. over interstate commerce extend to regulation of local incidents (such
as racial discrimination in a motel serving interstate travelers) which
might substantially and harmfully affect that commerce.
Early motels
The term "motel" originated with the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo,
originally called the Milestone Mo-Tel, which was constructed in 1925
by Arthur Heineman (although some hotels with a similar architecture
existed at least as early as 1915). In conceiving of a name for his hotel,
Heineman abbreviated motor hotel to mo-tel after he could not fit the
words "Milestone Motor Hotel" on his rooftop. Many other businesses
followed in its footsteps and started building their own auto camps.
Combining the individual cabins of the tourist court under a single roof
yielded the motor court or motor hotel. A handful of motor courts were
beginning to call themselves motels, a term coined in 1926. Many of
these early motels are still popular and are in operation, as in the case
of the 3V Tourist Court in St. Francisville, Louisiana, built in 1938.
During the Great Depression, those still traveling (including business
travelers and traveling salespeople) were under pressure to manage
travel costs by driving instead of taking trains and staying in the new
roadside motels and courts instead of more costly established
downtown hotels where bell captains, porters, and other personnel
would all expect a tip for service.

10. In the 1940s, most construction ground to a near-halt as workers, fuel,
rubber, and transport were pulled away from civilian use for the war
effort. What little construction did take place was typically near military
bases where every habitable cabin was pressed into service to house
soldiers and their families.
The post-war 1950s would usher in a building boom on a massive scale.
By 1947, there would be approximately 22,000 motor courts in
operation in the U.S. alone; a typical 50-room motel in that era cost
$3000 per room in initial construction costs, compared to $12,000 per
room for metropolitan city hotel construction.​[11]​
By 1950 there would
be 50,000 motels serving half of the 22 million U.S. vacationers; a year
later motels would surpass hotels in consumer demand. The industry

11. peaked in 1964 with 61,000 properties and fell to 16,000 properties by
2012.
Many motels began advertising on colorful neon signs that they had "air
cooling" (an early term for "air conditioning") during the hot summers
or were "heated by steam" during the cold winters. A handful used
novelty architecture such as wigwams or teepees or used
decommissioned rail cars to create a Red Caboose Motel in which each
"Caboose Motel" or "Caboose Inn" cabin was an individual rail car.
Expansion
The 1950s and 1960s was the pinnacle of the motel industry in the
United States and Canada. As older mom-and-pop motor hotels began
adding newer amenities such as swimming pools or color TV (a luxury
in the 1960s), motels were built in wild and impressive designs. In-room
gimmicks such as the coin-operated Magic Fingers vibrating bed were
briefly popular; introduced in 1958, these were largely removed in the
1970s due to vandalism of the coin boxes. The American Hotel
Association (which had briefly offered a Universal Credit Card in 1953 as
forerunner to the modern American Express card) became the
American Hotel & Motel Association in 1963.
As many motels vied for their place on busy highways, the beach-front
motel instantly became a success. In major beach-front cities such as
Jacksonville, Florida, Miami, Florida, and Ocean City, Maryland, rows of

12. colorful motels such as the Castaways, in all shapes and sizes, became
commonplace.