Holiday Inn
The first Holiday Inn hotel opened in Memphis, Tennessee in 1952. Since then, the chain of hotels and motels has become a familiar site to travelers all around the USA... and the world! Even as a kid I liked the Holiday Inn marquee signs, designed by Memphis artist James A. Anderson. With over 500 flashing lightbulbs and 1500 feet of neon tubing, these large signs (known in the company as the "Great Sign") were hard to miss - and expensive to build. How can you not want to stay at a hotel with a giant yellow arrow and flashing star? By 1968 the 1000th location opened.
The photo below is from Somewheresville, USA, circa 1965. Merry Christmas!
Here's another Inn, date and location unknown. In spite of many (many!) car trips as a kid, we never stayed in a Holiday Inn (we were more of a HoJo's family). In fact, the only one I've visited was in Egypt. Really! It was surprisingly close the the Great Pyramid.
In 1982, the founder of the Holiday Inn chain retired, and the Board of Directors decided to do away with the classic signs, tearing them down and sending them to the scrap yard. Today only ONE original survives, having been found stored in pieces in Minnesota. It is being restored for a sign museum in North Dakota. Meanwhile, here's what the company uses these days. Hmmmm....
Holiday Inn is now owned by the British InterContinental Hotels Group, and is one of the largest hotel chains in the world.
17 comments:
I've often thought that the H of the new logo looks like Highlights for Children. I do miss the old signs sometimes.
My first job in high school was at the local Holiday Inn. I mostly delivered extra towels and roll-away beds to rooms between 4:30 and 9:00pm. On occasion, the manager would have me change the lettering on the sign marquee, so instead of MERRY CHRISTMAS it might say "WELCOME MR JONES" or "ROTARY MEETING WED". Some guests loved seeing their name spelled out on the Great Sign, sort of like getting your name in lights on Broadway! Only this was announcing that you had arrived at the Holiday Inn in Omaha for a business trip on Thursday.
The manager would select the name by looking at the reservation cards and would randomly pick one, being sure we could spell it because we had lost many of our consonants. Occasionally she let me choose, and one evening I posted "Welcome Don Smith". What I didn't know (and learned later that evening) was that Don Smith was seeing his girlfriend at the HI behind his wife's back, and the wife saw the sign and caught them in flagrante delicto.
What a great summer job...
Bill in Denver
Holiday Inn always brings back memories of childhood vacations, because it was the only place we ever stayed. I miss the old Vegas style signs. :-)
I agree with Phil!
I do miss the old sign. We had a few of the Inns up here in the Monterey Bay area.
I never stayed at one, but used to go to the Holiday Inn in town every year when attending the local postcard shows at it's convention rooms. Another era.
We had one of those old signs in our town! So sad when they took it down.
Phil, what is "Highlights For Children"?!
Bill, I used to see teenagers putting up the letters on movie marquees and think it looked like the most cool and fun thing to do! Now… not so much, ha ha. I would definitely love arriving at a hotel and seeing my own name on the sign!
Nancy, it seems like all the cool stuff goes away.
Connie, where have you been?
K. Martinez, it used to seem like you'd see those signs EVERYWHERE. I guess that's why they conjure up so much nostalgia for those of us who remember them.
Melissa, I'll bet a lot of people felt the same way.
I agree with Phil about the new logo, although I can't believe it took me this long to make the connection.
"Highlights for Children" is a monthly magazine intended for 6-to-12-year-olds. In publication since 1946, it contains no advertising.
We're a three-generational "Highlights" family - my mother had a subscription in the late 40's-early 50's, I had one in the 70's, and my kids had one in the 2000's. My favorite feature was (and still is) the "Hidden Pictures."
More information in this Wikieverything article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlights_for_Children
Thanks Chuck, that's a new one to me... frankly I am surprised that I have never heard of "Highlights For Children". I have three siblings, and we got a lot of magazines, and we moved a lot. You'd think it would have been on my radar!
Chuck - Wasn't Highlights the magazine that had the characters Goofus and Galiant? One bad and one good.
I used to read Highlights magazines while waiting for the dentist when I was a kid.
Goofus and Gallant-! First appeared in Highlights beginning in 1948.
Nanook - Thanks for answering my question.
Sorry, K. Martinez. Didn't see your question until now. I'm glad we have the rest of the GDB community to fill in when one of us steps out. :-)
I too always associate Highlights with the Doctor's and Dentist's waiting rooms. Highlights at the start of the visit and lollipops at the end. And an eternity of horror between the two! (Or so I felt as a child.) But I did always look forward to the hidden pictures page in the magazine.
I too always associate Highlights with the Doctor's and Dentist's waiting rooms. Highlights at the start of the visit and lollipops at the end. And an eternity of horror between the two! (Or so I felt as a child.) But I did always look forward to the hidden pictures page in the magazine.
I can walk from my house to the site of that first Holiday Inn on Summer Ave. in Memphis. The building was torn down many years ago and today is the location of a funeral home.
I remember those old signs so well. We were not a big Holiday Inn family, but stayed in them a few times, usually out-of-state, AZ, NV, NM, etc.
Oddly enough, the first one we stayed in was the Disneyland location. I remember it very clearly, because it was a highrise hotel with internal corridors. Most of my overnighters till then had been in motels, lowrise with exterior corridors. The Holiday Inn felt very uptown and sophisticated to a hick from the sticks.
The new logo just doesn't have the "juice" that the old sign had. I did'nt make the Highlights connection till reading this, however.
@Pegleg Pete, my experiences of Highlights are exact parallel to yours. Although I recall Goofus as just having poor judgment, rather than being malicious.
Fun conversation with everyone. Thank you very much, Major for facilitating.
JG
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