Anaheim Motels, September 1961
Today is the first of several blog posts that will feature photos that Lou Perry took on the mean streets of Anaheim, circa September, 1961. It seems almost beyond belief that anyone would take photos like these, but Lou definitely had an eye for details, and my guess is that he found not just interest, but maybe even a little beauty in these humble motels and stores. When Sue B. (Lou's daughter) told me that her dad took photos of everything, she wasn't kidding!
First up is this image of the Lamplighter Motel (Air Conditioned!), which was located at 1759 So. West Street.
There was a heated pool, "console televisions", and... well, I don't need another thing to be honest. Maybe some little powdered donuts for breakfast, and I can bring those with me!
Next is the Saga Motel, located at 1650 Harbor Boulevard.
There it is, so close to the famous Disneyland sign!
The Saga had 100 rooms, a coffee shop/restaurant & cocktail lounge, a TWA office and Hertz office, and as you can see here a "beautiful palm-fringed Saga pool". Pretty nice!
And lastly (for today), her's a wonderful look at the Princess Motel, located at 1769 West Street (at Patella), "opposite Disneyland's quiet west side".
I love this classic vintage postcard! The Princess Motel was AAA approved, air-conditioned and with "infrared heat", free TV, room phones, sun patios, large heated swimming pool, table tennis, Hi-Fi, and best of all - honeymoon suites. Hubba hubba!
If you loved Lou's photos, never fear - there are more to come! MANY thanks to Sue B. for sharing her dad's amazing pictures.
27 comments:
Major-
WOW... where do I check-in-??!! Looks like so much fun. Check out those 'classy' guests, posed along the edges of the pool at the Saga-! Perhaps a bit too 'high-class' for me. I'll probably just check-in at the Princess, with my gigantic automobile-! I've always loved this post card, with its primitive artwork. ("Patella"... hmmm - you have a very inventive typewriter, Major).
Thank You Lou-! [and Sue, too]
I miss so many of those hotels … towards their end many became tacky ,rundown , and dirty …. But in their heyday they were fun!
Notice the uncomfortably posed models around the exotic pool.
Growing up in San Diego we usually stopped at a restaurant or coffee shop at one of the motels around Disneyland before hitting the freeway to home. I have very early memories of the dramatic lighting in the planters at the entries of these restaurants…. It was lovely me some of the fantasy of Disneyland spilled out of the burm and into these motels and restaurants. Mostly all gone now.
I answered yesterdays question kinda late regarding the Haunted Mansion logo .
I'm trying to figure out what a "Swim TV" is. ;-)
This motel looks perfectly presentable to me; I don't see how Walt could object to its appearance.
The pool seems to be in the shape of an old-style hot water bottle; the ones made out of rubber with a stopper that sometimes would leak or pop out, with unpleasant results.
The marquee sign on the Saga Motel is telling us that "The Four Naturals", "Stage and Record Artists" are appearing nightly. (Not sure if I'm reading the sign correctly.) Natural what?? Blondes? No genetically modified genes?
In the Saga postcard, the Matterhorn looks a little strange... too pointy. And I don't see any Skyway buckets... or Fudgie.
It looks like the ladies are forced to sit on hard rocks around the Saga pool. While the men relax in comfy chairs.
Try as I might, I can't see why the Princess Motel is called the Princess Motel. It isn't pink and purple. There are no frilly frills. The sign out front looks generically average. The motel doesn't look like a castle. I do like the mid-century white rocks on the roof though.
I see that the princess finally makes an appearance... on the postcard. Sounds like it had all the amenities, so maybe it was better than it looked?
Thanks once again to Lou Perry for capturing a slice of life around Disneyland. And thanks to Sue and Major.
I love seeing these quaint little motels that used to surround the park!
Once again, we can see the Wonder Bowl sign, just beyond the Lamplighter Motel. It's in the upper right corner shot on the postcard, above the diving board.
It looks like a major fog bank is rolling in around the Matterhorn, in that Saga postcard. Maybe "The Crawling Eye" is hiding in the fog, and the aliens are confusing the Matterhorn, with Mount Trollenberg. Or maybe they are looking for Janet Munro, since she was in two movies, about two different Swiss mountains.
I wonder if the Foremost trailer was dishing out free samples of ice cream. It's parked next door to the Princess Motel, in the gas station parking lot. We can see a couple gas pumps hiding behind one of the bus stop benches, as well as a couple Goodyear tire signs. I remember a gas station on that corner of Katella and West St., right up until the conversion of the area into "The Anaheim Resort." And I guess that land that the gas station, the Princess Motel, and the Lamplighter Motel were all on, is what is now being considered for a DCA expansion. I'll believe it when I see it. But even if the expansion does happen, I'm sure they'll botch it.
There is still a Saga Motel on Colorado Blvd., in Pasadena. The sign has the same font as it's Anaheim counterpart had, and the motel's exterior has changed very little since it was built in 1959:
https://www.visitpasadena.com/imager/s3_us-west-1_amazonaws_com/pasadena-2020/images/Main-Images-biz/945x596-Saga-Motor-Hotel_c3cc3d3e99a0496ea9909ca43528d03d.jpg
https://cf.bstatic.com/xdata/images/hotel/max1024x768/31644393.jpg?k=2b05a8ae23442de430cf9f6835f7d7db47a84a9e31b2bf263f96a8a0944b04cc&o=&hp=1
Thank you so much Lou and Sue, for this wonderful vintage trip through the streets surrounding The Happiest Place on Earth! And thank you Major, too!
HEY!! THOSE KIDS IN THE BLUE PLYMOUTH ARE NOT WEARING SEATBELTS!!! In fact daughter is standing up! She’s gonna knock mother’s Gin Rikki off the car dashboard!
Man those crazy dangerous 50’s people!!
TOKYO: that Matterhorn was cropped too much!! That’s why it’s too pointy. That was very common thing with postcards … they would superimpose bright blue skies with puffy dramatic clouds in photos that had actual hazy or grey skies. I have some Disneyland postcards from the 1960’s with identical photos …. But totally different skies …. And some with completely different subjects but with the EXACT SAME SKY AND CLOUDS!!
…….,,”anything’s possible at Disneyland!”
I have stayed at so many motels and hotels in Anaheim through the years. The Saga Motel was one of them. It was close enough to Disneyland to walk there and they had a complimentary continental breakfast in the morning. This was in the pre-DCA days.
Thanks, Lou & Sue. Looking forward to seeing more of your Anaheim Street photos. Thank you too, Major.
"It looks like the ladies are forced to sit on hard rocks around the Saga pool."
It's like they're at some sort of hard rock café.
I love the cool signs. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Nanook, cars were bigger back then! As for “Patella”, my computer doesn’t know what a “Katella” is.
Mike Cozart, I wonder why the motels got so seedy and rundown? I mean, the obvious answer is that the owners did not do proper upkeep, but WHY? If they’d all been kept neat and tidy, maybe some would still be around today.
JB, I agree with you, in fact all of these motels look fine, but Walt probably remembered when it was all farmland and orange groves, so anything by comparison would look cluttered. I don’t even want to know about “The Four Naturals”! And yes, whoever composited in that blue sky with clouds was a little enthusiastic when “cutting” around the Matterhorn. You see this on old postcards a lot! Women like sitting on lumpy rocks, I don’t understand it, but it’s true. I think the names for many of the motels was not indicative of the decor… I just looked at a photo of the Aztec Motel, and there is nothing Meso-American about it. It was just a theme (such as it was) that hadn’t been taken yet. There was the Pixie, and the Pioneer, and the Jolly Roger, and the Candy Cane Inn, and…!
TokyoMagic!, oh yeah, there’s that distinctive Wonder Bowl sign in the distance. I wondered what that dome shape (“fog bank”) was supposed to be! It’s very odd. I’m unaware of “The Crawling Eye”, though I know that it swept the Academy Awards the year it came out. And like you, I was curious about the Foremost trailer, it seems like an odd thing; maybe a salesman was staying in the motel? There was a time when I would have been so excited at the prospect of park expansion, but now I have learned to temper my enthusiasm. They have to SPEND LOTS OF MONEY to get good results, that’s just the way it is. Do it now, or do it later, I guess. thanks for the pix of the Saga Motel in Pasadena, it looks vaguely familiar, I think I’ve gone past it.
Mike Cozart, back then the seatbelts were made of piano wire.
Mike Cozart, one of my favorite things when collecting postcards was looking for variations, and “different skies” was one of those. I’ve been considering delving into my postcard collection and scanning some, I need more content!
K. Martinez, you’re lucky that you got to experience some of those classic motels before they went away forever.
JB, thanks for filling in the details of The Four Naturals... all I got was the first line, which I take as "Dancing Nightly To"
... considering Disneyland and the lodgings, sure were a lot of places to dance on your 1961 Anaheim vacation!
Sue, (and Lou) thanks for sharing these, very enjoyable to see details of the surroundings of the park at that time. (we never stayed in motels, just drove fro Van Nuys and back)
thanks Major for these pics
@ JB-
"...The marquee sign on the Saga Motel is telling us that "The Four Naturals"... are appearing nightly... Natural what??"
Oh - that's easy - the group only sings natural notes-! (They have a very limited repertoire, however-!)
Nanook, I'm glad you made the music theory joke so I didn't have to!
Maj, I'd love to see some postcards!
Back when Disneyland and the surrounding area was more of a 'human' scale...laid back...low key...me sipping Coca-Colas by the swimming pool. Oh well, I can dream of that...we commuted home to Lancaster, Sherman Oaks and later Costa Mesa. They were all days trips. How we did the trips between Lancaster and Anaheim in a day amazes me. Mom, Dad and me were young and crazy I suppose. KS
KS, we drove from Sherman Oaks, too, since our old house -- in Van Nuys -- is now magically moved to Sherman Oaks!
I somehow actually remember on the freeway being told "look for the castle" (and spotting it), before it became "look for the giant mountain".
Santa Ana Freeway should be considered a minor "land", much like the Parking Lot, but ranked far lower.
LTL The trip down the Santa Ana Freeway was an attraction unto itself indeed. At least your old home is still there in Sherman Oaks, or I assume it is. Ours disappeared into a multi-story condo just behind Ventura Blvd, and what was once the Hungry Tiger restaurant. I don't ever remember looking for the castle. But what I did look for was the sign along side the freeway just before Harbor Blvd...saying to make the exit for Disneyland. It was very distinctive and was placed in front of what was an old orange-packing brick warehouse. There are pictures of that sign floating around which happily told me my memory is still pretty good. What a relief that is!! KS
Melissa, the signs truly are incredible, it seems like a lost art now.
LTL, I’m sure there are still lots of places to dance and hear live music, but… probably not at your local motels! I’m grateful to Sue for scanning and sharing these pics, I was pretty thrilled to see them in my Gmail!
Nanook, maybe they sang au natural as well?
Melissa, I have no idea what natural notes are, so the joke is lost on C-students like me.
KS, whoa, Lancaster to Anaheim! That’s quite a jaunt. Makes me feel lazy “only” having to drive 75 minutes. Now I’m a little closer, but just a little. On a Sunday I might be able to get down there in an hour.
LTL, ha ha, I lived in Van Nuys, and then one day I woke up and I was in Sherman Oaks! I’m amazed that you could ever see the castle from the freeway, it seems so tiny now. I love it, but it’s relatively small, for sure.
KS, somewhere I have a slide (not yet scanned) taken from a car on the freeway, and you can see a billboard announcing that Disneyland is coming up. However I think it says “Disneyland In 3 Miles”, so it was not right near the last exit.
"Melissa, I have no idea what natural notes are, so the joke is lost on C-students like me."
All the notes are natural in the key of C!
Major and KS, yay Sherman Oaks.
KS, seems like you lived near Pete's Corn, the last working farm that I know of near Ventura Blvd. I lived north of Milliken Jr High.
Nanook and Melissa, yay music jokes.
"Advice for a tightrope walker... C-sharp or B-flat."
At some point a motel manager might well have decided expensive upkeep wasn't necessary to keep those station wagons rolling in, full of families determined to spend as little time in their room as possible. And with those station wagons coming from all directions for very rare visits, were any of these motels dependent on repeat business or word of mouth?
Also: If an innkeeper owned the land underneath, offers from big chains and the like would have gotten ever more tempting -- and since buyers were only interested in location, there was again reduced interest in upkeeping whatever was on it.
Walt wasn't happy about all the cheap hostelries just outside his gates. Here he'd taken huge risks to build Disneyland, and these motels -- many seeming to mock his carefully themed environments, or worse, implying a kinship -- were scooping up very serious money simply by being nearby.
In time economics transformed surrounding Anaheim, as only major chains and projects like convention centers could afford to buy out the little places.
Interesting that Lou's photos are better composed than many of the professional postcard shots.
Also that kind of charming - cute “Theming” fell out of favor ….like fickle fashion , architecture falls outa of style as well. Even small theme parks didn’t do well during the late 70’s and 80’s …. And by the 90’s was their death knell. Santa’s Village Santa Cruz 1979 and Santa’s Village Skyforest 1998 are some local examples. Small regional themed shopping centers too fell into disrepair or closed down …. Like THE OLD TOWN MAL … HOBBY CITY … FRONTIERTOWN SHOPPING VILLAGE …. OLD WORLD GERMAN VILLAGE .Sone places hanged on into current times but the theming and quality suffered greatly like SEAPORT VILLAGE San Diego …SHORELINE VILLAGE Long Beach … Abs we all know what recently happened to PORT’S ‘O CALL VILLAGE in San Pedro : completely demolished.
In the 1900’s and 1920’s examples of 1700’s architecture was destroyed ….40’s and 50’s thousands of beautiful examples of Victorian building torn down … then came the destruction of 1920’s … And 30’s Beux Arts …. Then people were disgusted with art deco and moderne … in the 60’s and 70’s …. Now despite the popularity of Mid Century Modern EVERYTHING …. We are losing more major examples of substantial real MID CENTURY ARCHITECTURE than ever before …. THE CAROUSEL OF SADNESS .
I belong to both the LA MODERN Conservancy and MODERN SAN DIEGO …. And since I’ve become “aware” in the early 90’s have photographed several hundreds of examples of mid century architecture- mostly commercial - all before being completely demolished .
In fact structures from the period that really defined southern Californian have very few examples still standing . From 1
1995 to today … Anaheim , Buena Park is completely unrecognizable.
I do love these pictures, thank you Lou and Sue!
We never stayed in any of these places, but they sound familiar. I do recall the Saga because of its proximity to the front gate. The Lancers sign is visible in one pic, this is familiar from ads in Vacationland, but I never knew where it was, now it makes sense to be the restaurant for the Saga.
Tokyo, I’m not sure why there would be a Foremost Creamery trailer parked there, but it might be just as you surmise. Trailers like that were parked at the local Fair or parades to give away samples and promote the Creamery. Not sure what fair this might have been visiting, but maybe the crew added a visit to Disneyland before heading on to the next event. Creameries back then were independent companies that bought milk from family dairies, not owning farms themselves. The Creamery would process and package the milk into milk, butter, cream, ice cream, etc. and handle marketing while the farmers just raised cows and did the milking. Foremost milk tankers were a common sight in my childhood, stopping at all the mom and pop dairies to collect the days output.
Thanks for the note about the Wonderbowl sign, between that and the power lines, I can orient the motels location.
LTL and KS, I agree about the freeway then being an attraction in itself, but not any more. I do recall that sign too, and the proto-Assyrian tire factory!
DBenson, absolutely right.
Mike C, I remember when the term “motel modern” was used with derision, now I hear it used in admiration.
The Princess Motel art looks like something from my college rendering class, I love it.
Thanks Major, hoping for more motel pics someday.
JG
LTL...If you see this....I don't recall that farm. I too went to Millikan for 1 year...7th grade. That was '62-63 so maybe you were in my class? I was adjacent to Ventura Blvd. far south of your home. Small world after all!! KS
KS... I graduated Millikan in 1969, so looks like we weren't there at the same time, but wow!
PS, I also went to Chandler grades K-6!
The farm was at the south end of Van Nuys Blvd, almost to Ventura, kinda across from the Hamburger Hamlet location. Long gone now!
Yay, Valley!
Long time gone LTL. I DO recall Hamburger Hamlet. Heck...my buddy and I rode our bikes over to there, and surrounding areas, from time to time. And now a vague memory of the farmland creeps into my memory. WOW!! KS
Major, Lou and Sue, really enjoying studying these further.
Looking at that swimming pool picture with the palm trees and pretty girls. Imagine seeing that scene from some place with a heavy winter, California would look like paradise.
I now realize we had a patio umbrella "exactly" like the one in the pool pic, teal or turquoise outer color and a long white fringe, with brown and yellow flowers inside, and our patio table, also "exactly" the same with a round concrete base for the umbrella. We never had the pool or palm trees though... had to make do with the walnut orchard.
Thank you again, so much appreciated.
JG
Glad y'all enjoyed these!
Lou and Sue
Post a Comment