What roadside motels across America mean
As cities grow, how do they respect and incorporate their past?
My only experience of a motel was on a traveling soccer squad for my business school in the first year of my move to the US. It was horrible. I could not sleep for thinking about the germs on the bed which I was sharing with 2 teammates (we slept across the bed with our feet on the ground). I have not spent a night in a motel since that night ~ fifteen years ago.
The Bates Motel and motels like it (~16k of them across the US, and I’m not counting fictional motels :) ) serve as much a cultural touchstone as they serve a business need for the owners of the motels.
Motels are as much characters in our cultural lexicon as are the events that take place in motels, real or fiction. We all remember scenes from our favorite shows that are set in motel rooms (the girlfriend death scene in ‘Breaking Bad’ just popped into my head. And now I see Omar shooting Brother Bouzone in the motel in ‘The Wire’).
The motel in American culture is both a place of hope for travelers who are in transit to what they hope is a better life and a place of possibility for those with horrible intent. A place where it feels like you can do whatever you want.
Beyond the neon oasis of The Strip, Las Vegas' roadside motels whisper tales of old Americana. In these nostalgic spaces, memories of cross-country travelers linger. As Las Vegas evolves, the potential of Revitalizing Motels as Themed Cultural Centers emerges, turning forgotten motels into hubs of history, art, and culture, ensuring that past legacies illuminate future paths.
The conflict between preserving nostalgic Americana, because motels are pretty much part of our culture and urban modernization. Abandoned mansions and buildings, what does history teach us?
Buildings are supposed to learn. But we’ve always built for the now. Especially the buildings put up to express the egoistic ambitions of a wealthy person, mansions. They are so much of the now and inflexible in their adaptation to even what we would consider as ‘wealthy expressing’ a few short years after the completion of the building. This inflexibility of buildings explains why rich people buy so many homes or move (and sell their old mansions) to differently express their wealth.
This is even more apparent in the buildings that express wealth obtained through evil or illegal means. Plantation mansions or the mansions of gangsters are this capsule of a time or a vocation that the people who dwell in them would rather not be associated with even as they desire to still be associated with the wealth of the previous owner (who might be family in some cases).
Majestic mansions bearing the weight of time line Charleston's historic streets, echoing tales of Southern grandeur and Civil War echoes. As some lie abandoned, they raise questions about preservation and legacy. Community Crowdfunding for Historic Building Preservation presents a novel approach, merging community spirit with historic reverence, ensuring that Charleston's stories, carved in wood and stone, aren't silenced by time.
The friction between preserving history and repurposing for modern needs. The challenge of honoring the past while addressing present necessities.