Architecture

The Star Lite Motel in Dilworth, Minnesota is a typical American 1950s L-shaped motel

A family enjoying a typical 1960s-era American motel room at the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge in Penns Grove, New Jersey. For a nominal fee, motels would provide a cot to accommodate this family's four children.

Motels frequently had large pools, such as the Thunderbird Motel on the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon(1973)

Motels differ from hotels in their location along highways, as opposed to the urban cores favored by hotels, and their orientation to the outside (in contrast to hotels, whose doors typically face an interior hallway). Motels almost by definition include a parking lot, while older hotels were not usually built with automobile parking in mind.

Because of their low-rise construction, the number of rooms which would fit on any given amount of land was low compared to the high-rise urban hotels which had grown around railway stations. This was not an issue in an era where the major highways became Main Street in every town along the way and inexpensive land at the edge of town could be developed with motels, car lots, filling stations, lumber yards, amusement parks, roadside diners, drive-in restaurants, theatres, and countless other small roadside businesses. The automobile brought mobility and the motel could appear anywhere on the vast network of two-lane highways.

Layout

Motels are typically constructed in an "I"-, "L"-, or "U"-shaped layout that includes guest rooms; an attached manager's office; a small reception; in most motels, a swimming pool; and in some cases, a small diner. A motel was typically single-story with rooms opening directly onto a parking lot, making it easy to unload suitcases from a vehicle.^[2] A second story, if present, would face onto a balcony served by multiple stairwells.

The post-war motels, especially in the early 1950s to late 1960s, sought more visual distinction, often featuring eye-catching colorful neon signs which employed themes from popular culture, ranging from Western imagery ofcowboys and Indians to contemporary images of spaceships and atomic era iconography. U.S. Route 66 is the most popular example of the "neon era". Many of these signs remain fully intact to this day.

Room types

In some motels, a handful of rooms would be larger and contain kitchenettes or apartment-like amenities; these rooms were marketed at a higher price as "efficiencies" as their occupants could prepare food themselves instead of incurring the cost of eating all meals in restaurants. Rooms with connecting doors (so that two standard rooms could be combined into one larger room) also commonly appeared in both hotels and motels. A few motels (particularly in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where a motel strip extending from Lundy's Lane to the falls has long been marketed to newlyweds) would offer "honeymoon suites" with extra amenities such as whirlpool baths.