Design History Lives On in Motels : Architecture: Motor courts like those along old U. S. Route 1 are valuable roadside attractions, preservationists say.

The Cold War was well under way when Bruno Zizic chose a name for the motel he bought near the Point Mugu Naval Weapons Station. He called it The Missile and marked the spot with a winged neon projectile, creating a cheery greeting out of the militarism of the era.

Zizic, a die maker who longed for self-employment, considered motels a good business choice. He was not alone. Small, independent motels prospered as middle-class America belted across the country on summer vacations with the baby boom in the back seat.

The stream of travelers along U.S. 1 deposited a wealth of motel relics in west Ventura County where, like outdated hostelries nationwide, they now languish, appreciated mainly by novelists and semi-permanent lodgers living from day to day.

Sadly, motels never achieved the cultural icon status of diners. While diners are now trendy, motels, to most people, still seem tacky.

Architects and historians are somewhat more charitable. They call motels neglected examples of roadside architecture, and some say they are worthy of preservation.

Ventura County architectural historian Judith Triem said that although she has only made casual observations, the commercial strip beginning on Ventura’s East Main Street and continuing along Thompson Boulevard appears to be a glossary of motel styles from the Mission revival to Art Moderne.

But these days, the only revival that interests most motel owners is the economic kind. Interstate highways and competition from chains have left independent owners struggling to survive. During the four years Sung Kim has owned the Meta Motel, he’s been forced to lower his room rates 22% while the value of his property dropped an estimated $400,000.

“If the economy wasn’t so bad, I think I’d sell out,” Kim said.

For Leo Jennings it’s the opposite: If the economy weren’t so bad he wouldn’t be in the motel business.

Jennings and a partner had to foreclose on the Mission Bell in April and took over operation of the business. When they sold it seven years ago, he said, it was still a popular stop for tourists.

“Lots of Germans used to come here during the nine years we owned it,” said Jennings. “The people we sold it to didn’t look after it and started using it for welfare housing.”

Just then a tenant stepped into the office where Jennings sat surrounded by remodeling rubbish, fugitive curtain rods and empty spackle buckets. Jennings talked briefly to the man, took the printed government check and, after the tenant left, he shrugged.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do with it, whether to fix it up and operate it again or just sell it. Whatever, the place shouldn’t look like this. It has too much history.”

History is right. As the oldest motel in Ventura County, the 63-year-old Mission Bell predates what David Gebhard, a professor of architecture at UC Santa Barbara, calls the golden age of motels.

“The golden age began after World War II when motels were used by the traveling middle class,” Gebhard said. “Then interstate highways and chain motels ended the growth of independent motels around 1960.”

According to Gebhard, who co-authored the book “A Guide to the Architecture in Southern California,” there is no catalogue of important roadside architecture, but there ought to be.

Chris Wilson, assistant professor of architecture and planning at the University of New Mexico, agrees, and he’s doing something about it. Wilson led a tour of notable roadside architecture along Route 66 for a recent architectural conference in Albuquerque.

“I think that we need to study and appreciate all aspects of our history and environment,” he said. “The motel aspect of the car culture was a populist development that arbiters of culture denigrated at first. It’s taken architects a long time to step back and appreciate their vitality.”

Wilson describes the classic motel design as an L- or U-shaped layout built around landscaping, a playground or, in later plans, a swimming pool. Parking is in carport bays between the units, a design holdover from the days when they were called motor courts and individual cabins were arranged in a row, with parking beside each.

Later designs put parking in front of the rooms, but that was a departure from a long, low roof that gave the classic motels their characteristic horizon-hugging profile.

Of motels with two floors, we will not speak.

AN AMERICAN INVENTION

The word motel was coined in San Luis Obispo in 1924, but it was slow to catch on in Ventura. The telephone directory preferred to list auto courts until 1947 when it switched to motor courts. Motel was finally accepted by the telephone company in 1957.

As if the phone company’s stubbornness were not enough, motel had to compete with such early rivals as “autel,” which probably had the disadvantage of sounding vaguely French.

Motels were, after all, an American invention and deeply rooted in our cultural identity. Warren Belasco, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, traced motels to their beginnings--a wide spot in the road where early motorists pitched tents. Belasco said that astute roadside businessmen were quick to establish auto camps.

“The camps attracted affluent vacationers fleeing resort hotels where obsequious waiters served pretentious food in excessively formal dinning rooms,” Belasco writes in his book, “Americans on the Road.”

There was democracy on the open road. Packards, Belasco said, rubbed shoulders with Fords as the middle class re-enacted the pioneer myth of simplicity and self-sufficiency while mingling with itinerants, vagabonds and circus people, all of the sort not often encountered back home.

But the auto camps lost their charm. Americans got tired of schlepping around all the equipment, setting up the tent each night and taking it down in the morning.

“They wanted simplicity and self-sufficiency,” Belasco said, “yet they were recreationists, not rebels and as such they valued comfort and service.”

First they wanted picnic tables, then water, then cooking facilities. Cabins followed and travelers soon expected beds and even sheets.

When they got tired of waiting in line to use the communal showers, they demanded private bathrooms and were willing to pay more than $1 a night to have them. One motel owner built his business on the slogan, “A bed and a bath for a buck and a half.”

Belasco concludes that American hunger for escape was, like many things American, a mass-market phenomenon. When the tourist abandoned his autonomy he became a consumer again and the producers were ready.

By then the automotive recreation industry was at its zenith, thanks in no small part to Dinah Shore, General Motors’ ubiquitous spokesperson, who never tired of urging Americans to “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet.”

We obeyed.

By the millions, Americans rose up from knotty pine rathskellers and sprang forth from lawn chairs. Visitors to national parks shot up from 1.5 million a year in 1950 to 6.6 million by the end of the decade, according to figures compiled by Time Life Books for their series, “This Fabulous Century.”

The construction and home decorating industry were quick to identify the marketing opportunity. Brand-name mattresses, televisions and heaters appeared with increasing frequency in motel rooms and in motel advertisements.

Motels gave many tourists their first exposure to wall-to-wall carpets, sliding glass doors and air conditioning, according to a 1986 article in the Smithsonian Magazine. Among the things introduced to us for which we may not want to thank motels are molded plywood chairs, vinyl upholstery and kidney shaped end tables.

But despite name-brand attempts to distinguish their product, motels were basically just a place to sleep. The rooms were so similar that proprietors relied on the originality of their signs to attract customers.

Some of those signs have now achieved collector status, though the motels themselves are struggling.

“Awhile back some fella said he wanted to buy the missile sign, you know, for nostalgia,” said The Missile’s current owner, Patricia Messina. “He gave me his card, but I’d just as soon keep the sign.”

A certain type of customer was attracted to motels, not to signs. In fact, these customers were trying to escape attention.

Jane McAlary, docent at the Ventura County Museum of Art and History, explains:

“Motels were traditionally located at either end of town so people weren’t likely to see you going in. Only one person had to go in to register and the garages were between the rooms, you know, with the door on the side by the car, so you could slip in without anyone seeing.”

This was the so-called “bounce on-the-bed” or “hot-pillow” trade.

Yetive Hendricks, another docent, denied that such things happened in the city of Ventura, although she was able to supply a regional advertising euphemism for motels that catered to the bounce-on-the-bed trade.

“Siesta rates,” she whispered.

Tony Martinez, who worked for 45 years in the restaurant and motel business in Ventura, is more blunt about not telling what he’s seen: “Whaddaya want me to be, tarred and feathered?”

Motel owners had to protect themselves against a sordid image problem more Byzantine and horrifying than simply permitting adultery or sex out of wedlock.

In a 1940 magazine article, J. Edgar Hoover railed against motels, charging that they were haunted by “nomadic prostitutes, hardened criminals, white slavers and promiscuous college students.”

“I didn’t find a lot of evidence that what he said was true,” Belasco said, “but it was accepted.”

A concerted public relations campaign by early chain owners helped to neutralize the aura of impropriety in the lodging business. The Marriotts played up their Mormon values and Holiday Inns kept a chaplain on call.

Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson even displayed the Ten Commandments as well as photographs of Pat Boone, Billy Graham and the Pope on the wall of his Memphis office.

Such heavy hitters of piety might have kept the devil away from Wilson’s establishments. Clearly, some members of the literati were already staying somewhere else: The lead characters in Vladimir Nabakov’s “Lolita” traveled heavily and stayed in less well-protected lodgings, as did those of playwright Sam Shepard, who set several works in motels, including “Fool For Love.”

Neither is the image helped by the sort of activity that passes for night life along motel row. Police have conducted frequent sweeps for prostitution along portions of Thompson Boulevard. Some of the women arrested live in motels, police said, but they work in customers’ cars rather than in the rooms.

CHECKING OUT

Ironically, the same preoccupation with national defense that inspired The Missile’s name was also partly responsible for its decline and the slide of many other small motels.

The Interstate Highway and Defense Mobilization Bill was President Eisenhower’s idea to speed deployment in time of war. The two-lane roads of the federal highway system that carried traffic through business districts were replaced by four-lane highways like the section of Highway 101 that bypassed Thompson Avenue in 1960.

Access to the highways was limited and only the more heavily capitalized businesses, such as chain operators, could afford to locate on prime land near highway interchanges.

There were economies of scale affecting motel operations, too. An industry magazine pointed out that a 50-room motel could break even at 50% occupancy while a motel of 20 units required 70% occupancy or more.

The chains were to motels what McDonald’s was to mom and pop diners and megaplex cinemas were to drive-in movies.

JUST LIKE FAMILY

Business realities have evidently forced local motels surveyed into a niche market of supplying short-term housing, often for people on fixed incomes or general relief.

Melvin Loser, a disabled motorcycle mechanic who has lived at The Missile for more than a year, speaks for the community of motel lodgers when he says, “We’re like family around here. If you need a cigarette or a bite to eat, you know you can go knock on your neighbor’s door.”

Paul Patel owns the Rex Motel, which among the motels surveyed carries the distinction of being one of the few that survives on the traditional staple of tourists and business clients. Patel has seen his share of repeat customers during the 17 years he has owned the Rex. Ray Dropp, a retired teacher from Chicago, discovered the Rex in 1978.

Dropp said that in his travels he has gotten to know members of Patel’s extended family who have emigrated from India and begun operating motels in Southern California. This points to an interesting fact: Many older motels are owned by immigrant families.

According to a 1985 issue of the trade publication, Lodging, the rate of immigrant ownership is high because businesses can be bought with relatively little capital and they begin producing income quickly. Immigrants, the magazine said, often rely on extended families to help with the management and labor.

When Patel’s brother-in-law is on summer break from college, he puts down his physics books and picks up a broom.

Among the motel owners questioned, there were few individual success stories like Patel’s. Zizic’s experience relates a much more common sentiment of the motel proprietor.

“The motel looked like it had a lot of potential when we bought it. We had big ideas. We were going to rebuild it with a pool and all that, but we didn’t. The whole thing was an awful lot of work and we just barely broke even,” Zizic said.

“In the end, I was glad just to get rid of it.”

ALONG MOTEL ROW

An unscientific sampling of some of the county’s oldest motels along the old California 1.

META MOTEL, 211 E. Thompson Blvd., Ventura.

Opened 1949. 18 rooms. Homeless people doing their laundry in the swimming pool, the present owner said, forced the pool’s conversion to a rose garden.

THE WHITE CAPS, 1612 E. Thompson Blvd., Ventura.

Opened in 1951. 21 rooms. Rents monthly. Owner hates pesky questions. Fresh paint.

THE OCEAN VIEW, 1690 E. Thompson Blvd., Ventura.

Opened in 1940. 36 rooms. Name is purely theoretical. Yes, you are close enough to see the ocean if the view were not obstructed. Best viewing is of the Art Moderne entrance.

TOPPER MOTEL & LIQUOR, 1694 E. Thompson Blvd., Ventura.

Opened in 1941. 27 rooms. Along with the Ocean View, the Topper retains a marquee, a grand architectural gesture that crowned many humble motor courts.

REX MOTEL, 2406 E. Thompson Blvd., Ventura.

Opened 1939. 20 rooms. The Rex is among the few vintage motels that still relies on the traditional customer base of tourists and business clients.

SILVER SANDS MOTEL & APARTMENTS, 3215 E. Main St., Ventura.

Opened 1957 as Silver Spruce. 24 rooms. Two-story addition typical of later motel architecture.

THE MISSION BELL, East Main and Dunning streets, Ventura.

Opened in 1930. 24 rooms. An undisputed gem of roadside architecture, the Mission Bell is the oldest existing motel in Ventura. It attracted tourists from as far away as Germany before the new owners turned it into a welfare motel in 1986. The Mission is under renovation following foreclosure.

THE WAGON WHEEL, 2752 Wagon Wheel Road, Oxnard.

Opened in 1949. 88 rooms. Veteran Ventura County developer Martin V. (Bud) Smith owns the land but leases the motel. As the name indicates, the motif is pioneer. The predominant color is not-found-in-nature green, a hue unknown to the settlers, but nevertheless popular in the ‘50s.

THE MISSILE MOTEL & TAVERN, 4259 E. Hueneme Road, near Point Mugu Naval Air Station in Ventura County. 22 rooms. Opened as The Missile in 1956, but existed under an earlier name. The present owner says that before it was The Missile, the motel was used by card players and sporting men fleeing the formerly stuffy atmosphere of Santa Monica for Ventura County’s liberal attitude.

LOOKING BACK

1913: City workers in Douglas, Ariz., erect six wooden structures. First permanent roadside lodging intended for motorists.

1924: The word motel is coined when Arthur Heineman opens his Mo-tel Inn on Route 101 in San Luis Obispo.

1929: Tent sales plummet 50%.

1934: Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert share a cabin in “It Happened One Night.”

1946: Travelodge opens in San Diego.

1948: Number of motor courts tops 25,000.

1952: New motels built in the three years since 1949 reach 15,000.

1952: Kemmon Wilson takes a road trip, finds accommodations wanting, founds Holiday Inn.

1960: Americans introduced to the Bates Motel.

1962: First budget motel, Motel 6, in Santa Barbara.

1962: The American Hotel Assn. changes its name to the American Hotel and Motel Assn.