“You Say Hotel, I Say Motel . . . ” For most of us, the words hotel and motel are interchangeable. Meriam-Webster still maintains a technical difference between the two words. According to Webster, hotels provide “lodging and usually meals.” In contrast, motels provide “lodging and parking.” The technical difference reflects the evolving history of hotels and motels in America. Hotel is an old word making its first appearance in the English language around 1687. In contrast, motel is less than 100 years old making its first appearance in English in 1925
The word motel is a portmanteau word. A Portmanteau is a word that results from blending parts of two or more words to form a new word. Lewis Carroll was the first to use the term portmanteau to describe a word created from parts of two other words in Through the Looking Glass in 1871.
Carroll’s character Humpty Dumpty, while explaining the meaning of the word ‘slithy’ from the nonsense poem The Jabberwocky says, “Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’ ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active.’ You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.” So, in a more familiar context, portions of breakfast and lunch combine to form brunch. “You’ll love it. It’s not quite breakfast, it’s not quite lunch.” In the case of the motel, motor and hotel combine to make motel.
First There Were Hotels
The combination is significant. Hotels in the United States developed around downtowns and railroads. Railroads dominated travel in America from the early nineteenth century through World War Two. Cross country travelers arrived by train and then took a cab, trolley or walked to a downtown hotel. Once downtown, travelers walked everywhere else. Railroad depot hotels served travelers passing through and needing a night’s rest before changing trains. Many weary travelers found respite at Fred Harvey company depot hotels throughout the American West.
By the time automobiles appeared at the turn of the century, the railroad orientation of hotels was set. Nineteenth century hotels lacked accommodations for twentieth century cars. Most hotels lacked parking for automobiles. Yet, early cross-country automobile travelers were not bothered by the lack of parking.
Known as auto-tourers, early automobile travel enthusiasts were middle-class city residents wealthy enough to own cars. Concerned about the perceived ill-effects of their easy city living, they shunned hotels in favor of camping in the open countryside. Fancying themselves neo-pioneers, auto-tourers sought out hardship in the wilderness as a test of their vigor.
That’s Not a Campground, It’s My Yard!
This neo-pioneering, however, brought many auto-tourers in conflict with local landowners. Most rural landowners were less than thrilled to have middle-class accountants and other urban professionals from the city camping on their land, playing pioneer, and making a huge mess. The conflict between farmers and auto-tourers led many counties and small towns to ban roadside camping and establish auto-parks where auto-tourers could camp legally.
Municipal camps as they became known were expensive for towns to maintain. Only larger prosperous towns could afford them. The growing popularity of auto-touring and inability of every town to provide services for these tourers created an opportunity for early automobile travel entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs began buying land at the edge of towns and opening for-profit auto camps.
At first these auto-camps offered little more than camping spots and basic services like trash cans and well water. As the first private auto-camps garnered competition, auto-camp owners began adding services to lure automobile travelers to their camp. Hand-drawn wells turned into sinks with pumps. Simple sinks became enclosed bathrooms with toilets. Bathrooms gained showers. Camping spots graduated to cabins. Cabins gained garages and indoor plumbing. Camps added gas pumps, automobile grease racks, and other mechanic services.
Motels Arrive
As is often the case in evolving industries, the early auto camp operators had difficulty keeping up with newer establishments offering multiple services and more luxurious accommodations. As the brass-era of primitive automobiles gave way to more sophisticated cars and rough county roads gave way to new federal highways like Route 66, interest in auto-camping faded away.
By the 1920s, automobile travelers wanted hotel-like accommodations like railroad travelers enjoyed with the ability to accommodate parking their cars as well. Enter the motor hotel or by 1925, the motel. Early motor hotels offered private rooms, indoor plumbing, and an attached garage. In the first years of the 1920s, many of these rooms were still stand-alone cabin buildings. By the end of the decade, most configurations featured long rows of attached rooms.
Beginning in the late 1930s, the motor-court made its appearance. Motor-courts were motels configured in a U-shape. Attached motel rooms surrounded a central parking lot on three sides. On one corner of the U near the street was the motel office. Due to the Great Depression, motel operators built only a handful of motor-courts in the 1930s. After 1940, World War Two building supply restrictions paused new motor court construction.
The Postwar Motel Golden Age
The postwar boom fueled an explosion of automobile sales, automobile travel, and motor-courts. Across the United States, but particularly along highways like Route 66, motor-courts proliferated serving the ever-increasing postwar automobile traffic. Competition between motor-courts in the 1950s was fierce inspiring ever larger and more fanciful signage festooned with neon lights to entice weary travelers to spend the night.
With automobile traffic increasing exponentially year over year, motor-courts grew from 10–12-unit modest affairs to double and triple decked motor-courts with hundreds of rooms. Motor-court amenities grew too with pools, game rooms, convenience stores and attached restaurants becoming standard features.
Interstate Highways and Evolving Lodging Tastes
Interstate highway construction signaled the beginning of the end for motor-courts. As new interstate highways bypassed small towns, the older motels struggled for business. Many went out of business. Now abandoned, their decaying ruins littered once prosperous small towns across America.
The final nail in the motor-court coffin came from rising crime in the 1970s. The configuration of most motels allowed anyone to walk right up to the motel room door. Many travelers began feeling unsafe in motel rooms with doors facing an open parking lot. New competing motel chains captured these nervous travelers by blurring the lines of motel and hotel. They offered travelers an enclosed building with rooms accessed by interior hallways. Unlike older hotels, these new interstate hotels provided generous amounts of parking.
Which brings us to today where most of us use the words hotel and motel interchangeably. With passenger rail fading shortly after WW2, hotels lost their railroad orientation. Many travelers fly now rather than driving cross-country. Most typically rent a car at their destination.
Since modern travelers now arrive by car at interstate highway motels and downtown hotels alike, all motels and hotels accommodate automobiles. In transportation modality, architecturally, and semantically, the distinction between the hotel and the motel faded when travel by car became ubiquitous. So now we have the hotelmotel – not quite a hotel, not quite a motel, you’ll love it.