Chic and cheap: The new American motel
Marrakesh or bust
In 2001, when Bruce Abney bought the Caravan Inn, a 1950's motel in Desert Hot Springs, California, it was, he says, a bona fide flophouse — its 15 rooms occupied by a dubious lineup of "parolees, ne'er-do-wells, and lost souls." In those sorry, rough-and-tumble days, the going rate for a room was $235 per week, and, one suspects, you got what you paid for. Last year, Abney reopened the motel, and while Midcentury Modernism may be all the rage in the Coachella Valley, he eschewed the 1950's — "Palm Springs has done it" — in favor of a decidedly more exotic aesthetic: 1940s French Morocco. On buying trips to Marrakesh and Essaouira, Abney filled container after container with enough furniture, fabric, carpets, lighting, and accessories to outfit the now 12-room El Morocco Inn & Spa, which he manages with his partner, John Aguilar, and brother, Steve Abney.
Fifteen minutes north of Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs has a population of some 17,000, and is famous for mineral springs and its mom-and-pop "spa-tels," which at the city's peak in the 1960's numbered somewhere in the neighborhood of 80. The place fell on hard times in the 1970's, 1980's, and most of the 1990's, when the area was inundated not by movie stars and film moguls on leave from Hollywood but by Girls Gone Wild-style spring breakers, and bronzed men on vacation at frisky "clothing optional" gay guesthouses. By 1997, when Los Angeles architect Michael Rotondi and his partner, graphic designer April Greiman, opened their much-publicized Miracle Manor Retreat in Desert Hot Springs, the down-and-out spa-tels were ripe for renovating.
Like a traditional riad, El Morocco is built around a square courtyard, with a pool at the center and palm trees in oversize planters. The exterior palette is white and bleached terra-cotta, punched up with saturated jewel tones — blues, reds, greens, and golds — "colors from the Spice Route," according to Abney. Everywhere you look, there are horseshoe arches and billowing fabrics.
There is a social component to El Morocco that Abney anticipated by transforming one of the original guest rooms into the Kasbah Lounge; Library, an open-plan, two-room public suite off the central courtyard. Just outside, in the courtyard itself, there is a large U-shaped ebonized-wicker bar where guests gather for drinks. It is also here, each late afternoon before dinner, that Abney instructs guests in the subtle art of the traditional Moroccan hand-washing ceremony, which entails much splashing water and many ornate silver vessels. For an extra $10, you are invited to try flavored tobacco in one of five elaborate glass hookahs, which Abney will set up and oversee.
The typical El Morocco guest is someone who is looking for an "experiential" escape, Abney says. "It's a hip crowd: graphic designers, architects, artists, movie industry people, stuntmen, and actresses. At the moment, we're flying under the radar." 66810 E. Fourth St., Desert Hot Springs, Calif.; 888/288-9905; doubles from $199.
Deep in the art of Texas
"It's a pilgrimage to get here," says Heidi Poulin, general manager of the Thunderbird Motel in Marfa. The west Texas town is best known as the home of the late artist Donald Judd, who moved here in 1979 and established the not-for-profit Chinati Foundation, a 340-acre museum on the site of a former Army facility that permanently exhibits the work of Judd, John Chamberlain, and Dan Flavin, among others.
According to Poulin, most of the Thunderbird's guests are "culture tourists," art lovers from New York, California, and Europe who enthusiastically make the trek to visit Chinati, as well as the new galleries currently sprouting in the city.
Built in 1959 as a classic horseshoe-shaped single-story roadside motel with 24 rooms and a swimming pool at the center, the stucco-over-concrete block Thunderbird was owned by a local family who ran it, without fanfare, for decades. The motel has a sister property, the Holiday Capri Inn, situated directly across the street in an adobe building that also houses a bar that serves beer, wine, sake, and tamales. A renovation is currently in progress, scheduled to be completed in September.
If there are those who remember the Thunderbird Motel as the place where, in the mid to late 1990's, the management provided paper napkins in lieu of terry-cloth towels and the state of the shag carpeting was particularly egregious, that all changed in 2004, when the shuttered motel was bought by a consortium led by Liz Lambert, the attorney turned motelier who was responsible for the first-rate transformation of the San Jos Motel in Austin. Just as she'd done there, Lambert called in Bob Harris of Lake/Flato Architects, a well-respected San Antonio-based firm, for a complete renovation.
Minimalist sculptor and furniture-designer Judd would surely have approved of the no-frills aesthetic of the born-again motel, with its polished concrete floors and rooms outfitted with simple pecan furniture by Marfa-based artist turned designer Jamey Garza. However lean, the Thunderbird is not mean: the beds have white cotton sheets from India, wool blankets with a band of slate blue or charcoal gray at the top, and, at the foot, a colorful handwoven Peruvian blanket. Though something short of traditional room service, each morning at 7 a.m. a thermos of coffee is delivered to each room, suspended in a cloth bag from the doorknob.
Though everything may be new, the Thunderbird has not, in fact, substantially changed since 1959. It is still a straightforward roadside motel with no illusions of being anything more, though it is distinguished by the care and flair its new owners bring to the enterprise. 601 W. San Antonio, Marfa, Tex.; 432/729-1984; doubles from $125.
Kiss me, Kate
If less is more at the Thunderbird Motel in Marfa, too much is never enough at Kate's Lazy Meadow Motel in Mount Tremper, New York, a tiny hamlet near Woodstock, in Ulster County. Kate is Kate Pierson, of the rock band the B-52's, and her unbridled panache and hyperkinetic personality shine through. On her motel's Web site, she promises, "you'll find mind-blowing Midcentury Modern/space age/rocket-your-socks-off decor."
Monica Coleman, 41, in addition to being Pierson's partner, is the co-owner and general manager of Kate's Lazy Meadow Motel, the person responsible for the day-to-day operation of the nine-plus-acre compound. "It's sort of a hippie hangout," she says, adding that excited guests (and Pierson fans) arrive from as far away as Australia and Japan to revel in Kate's over-the-top accommodations. Three traditional Catskills cabin-style wooden buildings, complete with knotty-pine interior walls and wainscoting, house the front desk and the nine suites. One low-slung building features horizontal rough-cut wood siding, painted barn red with forest- green trim. The other two have Lincoln Log-like exterior finishes.
The Lazy Meadow Motel was owned in the early 1950's by a German couple, according to Coleman, and "then the local biology teacher took over and ran it as a campground and apartments." Pierson bought the property in 2002 and after retrofitting the rooms with her somewhat ecstatic vision of the 1950's, hung out the shingle for Kate's Lazy Meadow Motel, in the spring of 2004.
The rooms transport you back to a time in the 1950's when Formica, Tupperware, and the Avon Lady were young; a time when lime green and burnt orange were considered viable options. A popular alternative to the nine suites are five vintage aluminum Airstream trailers, which began turning up on the property in 2005. Parked on the bank of the Esopus Creek, in the high spirit of the endeavor, the restored Airstreams come complete with catchy names like Kate's Hairstream, Bubbles, North to Alaska, Tinkerbell, and Tiki, as well as such amenities as barbecues and outdoor lounge chairs, hammocks, and tiki torches.
Though there is a front desk manager and a caretaker, you are pretty much on your own at Kate's. They do not, for example, provide daily maid service. But with all of the "groovy" furnishings and accoutrements, all the hip hype and boisterous banter, Pierson has managed to create a delectable, authentically personal place. 5191 Rt. 28, Mount Tremper, N.Y.; 845/688-7200; doubles from $150.
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