Motel Chic

Motel Chic

Excerpt by Charles Gandee

From Palm Springs to the Florida Keys, a new generation of design-savvy entrepreneurs are reinventing an American icon—the roadside motel.

In a 1940 American Magazine article entitled “Camps of Crime,” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover waged something of a war against motels, which he labeled “a new home of crime in America, a new home of disease, bribery, corruption, crookedness, rape, white slavery, thievery, and murder.” Though Hoover, as we now know, had a penchant for hyperbole, it is nonetheless true that motels—steeped in the utilitarian anonymity of the open road—have had a dubious reputation for decades. The No-Tell Motel. The Bates Motel. The Fleabag Motel. The Rooms-by-the-Hour Motel.

Recently, however, the word motel has begun to shake loose from those pejorative connotations. The credit goes to a growing number of “boutique motels,” properties dating back to the 1940’s, 1950’s, and early 1960’s that have been bought and completely reimagined by energetic young moteliers with a clear vision of what makes for not merely comfortable but also memorable accommodations.

Unlike boutique hotels, which offer cutting-edge design and too-cool-for-school attitude, boutique motels are personable, cozy even. There is an egalitarian quality to these places, which offer a host of communal experiences, from Jacuzzis and heated swimming pools to expansive breakfasts and cocktails at 5:00 p.m.

“The best surprise is no surprise,” Holiday Inn crowed in the 1970’s, meaning that a room in a Holiday Inn was very much like every room in every Holiday Inn. This was supposed to be a good thing, comforting news to the anxious traveler. Reassuring or not, the current generation of moteliers thumbs its collective nose at the one-size-fits-all concept. They are determined to offer distinctive experiences in one-of-a-kind motels that are not part of any chain, but instead conscientiously sui generis, one-off expressions of the moteliers’ own style and sensibility.

Lucy and Lava Lamps

Feeling nostalgic for that reckless time when an unapologetically tipsy and alarmingly suntanned Dean Martin drank martinis and chain-smoked on prime-time television? Feeling sentimental for those heady days when the Russians launched Sputnik 1 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and the great space race was officially on? Then set your GPS to 562 West Arenas Road in Palm Springs, California.

Billing itself as the “ultimate Palm Springs modern experience,” Orbit In Oasis welcomed its first guests in 1957. Originally named the Village Manor, the nine-room motel is the work of architect Herbert W. Burns and is located in Palm Springs’ historic Tennis Club District, a genteel enclave of manicured single-family houses, condominiums, and small motels and bed-and-breakfasts, just off bustling North Palm Canyon Drive. The Tennis Club District dates back to the 1930’s: Gloria Swanson had a house here, and over the years visitors to the neighborhood at the base of the towering San Jacinto Mountains have included everyone from Joseph Kennedy to Doris Day.

Though Burns was not in the first tier of Modernist architects who practiced in Palm Springs, his work holds its own against buildings by such well-known talents as Albert Frey, John Lautner, Raymond Loewy, Richard Neutra, and R. M. Schindler. Known as the first designer-builder to introduce Palm Springs to the “ultramodern motor court inn,” Burns’s Orbit In features large studio-style rooms arranged around a central U-shaped courtyard, at the heart of which is a rectangular saltwater pool.

Out on West Arenas, Orbit In keeps a low public profile. The prevailing palette is dusty green with a dusty orange accent on the edges of the eaves. (In the rooms, however, there are vivid turquoises and reds, rich blues and leopard prints.) The grounds are planted with grasses and cacti, with towering palms and dense walls of banana trees and bird-of-paradise.

The motel was purchased in 1999 by Christy Eugenis and Stan Amy, whose home base is Portland, Oregon, where the couple are co-founders of New Season’s Markets, a chain of natural-foods stores. Eugenis, a former stylist and a vintage-clothing maven, among other things, happened to be on holiday in Palm Springs, and one afternoon while out rollerblading with a friend she came across a hand-painted for sale sign in front of the motel. To Eugenis’s eye, the decidedly down-at-the-heels period piece was a time capsule ready to be opened—the property had been pretty much left alone for decades, more the object of benign neglect than the victim of ruinous renovations. “Every interior and exterior feature was still intact,” Eugenis recalls.

Seattle artist Kevin Spitzer created the massive terrazzo boomerang bar that Eugenis envisioned, which rests on a polished concrete-block base beside the pool. At 5 p.m. each day, guests are invited to convene at the bar, where they are encouraged to try a complimentary “Orbitini” while Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby croons in the background.

After transforming one room into an office, Eugenis set to work outfitting the remaining nine with an exhaustive inventory of high-profile furniture pieces by a now familiar Homeric list of Midcentury Modern masters: Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi, Pierre Paulin, Warren Platner, Jens Risom, and Eero Saarinen. Even the valances above the curtained windows are covered in Ray Eames-designed textiles. Eugenis’s enthusiasm for Midcentury Modernism is unbridled.

Each room features a private walled-in back patio, and four of them also have original crisp white enameled kitchenettes that have been fitted out with period-perfect Melmac dinnerware. All of the rooms retain the old pink-on-pink tile bathrooms, which have been lovingly restored, right down to the glistening chrome electric heaters embedded in the walls. In a gated alcove off the motel’s entrance, there is a new open-air whirlpool for eight with an adjacent fire pit to help warm the cool desert nights.