The Motel in America (The Road and American Culture) - Softcover

Jakle, John A.; Sculle, Keith A.; Rogers, Jefferson S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801869188 ISBN 13: 9780801869181

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002

Synopsis

In the second volume of the acclaimed "Gas, Food, Lodging" trilogy, authors John Jakle, Keith Sculle, and Jefferson Rogers take an informative, entertaining, and comprehensive look at the history of the motel. From the introduction of roadside tent camps and motor cabins in the 1910s to the wonderfully kitschy motels of the 1950s that line older roads and today's comfortable but anonymous chains that lure drivers off the interstate, Americans and their cars have found places to stay on their travels. Motels were more than just places to sleep, however. They were the places where many Americans saw their first color television, used their first coffee maker, and walked on their first shag carpet.

Illustrated with more than 230 photographs, postcards, maps, and drawings, The Motel in America details the development of the motel as a commercial enterprise, its imaginative architectural expressions, and its evolution within the place-product-packaging concept along America's highways. As an integral part of America's landscape and culture, the motel finally receives the in-depth attention it deserves.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"The Motel in America . . . is to roadside accommodations what Gibbon's history is to Rome."—Wayne Curtis, Atlantic Monthly

"A motel tell-all on how these inns gradually popped up along our roadsides out of grass-roots entrepreneurship and built themselves a place in the American consciousness . . . Provocative."—Winnie Carlson, Memphis Commercial Appeal

"Historians and geographers turn a childhood love of the motor hotel into a well-documented and richly illustrated study."—Preservation

"An excellent, always engaging work that will remain the last word on many aspects of its subject."—Technology and Culture

About the Author:

John A. Jakle is a professor of geography and landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Keith A. Sculle is an adjunct professor of history at the University of Illinois at Springfield and head of research and education at the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Jefferson S. Rogers is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Tennessee at Martin.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0801869188
• ISBN 13: 9780801869181
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 408