I have been neglecting the Cohort, and I feel bad about that. But the Flickr pages stopped working properly for me a while back, and I couldn’t open any of the pictures. And there have been some great ones in the past month or so. So tonight I finally tried a different browser (Chrome, instead of Firefox), and it works on that. Odd. Anyway, it’s going to take me a while to catch up. I’ll start with this great shot of the (misnamed) Wigwam Motel on Route 66 in Holbrook, Az.
The first Wigwam Village was built in 1933 by Frank A. Redford. It was located on the corner of US-31E and Hwy 218 near Horse Cave, Kentucky. he had a large collection of native American artifacts that were displayed in the museum cum shop. he applied for a patent on the design of the buildings, which was granted in 1936. How a collector of Native American artifacts could have mislabeled teepees as wigwams is beyond my comprehension, but then it was a long time ago. Wigwam Village #1 was razed in 1982. The Wigwan Village concept was franchised or licensed, and some seven were built, most out west.
The Wigwam Village #6 was built in 1950 by Chester Lewis. He purchased the rights to Redford’s design, as well as the right to use the name “Wigwam Village,” in a novel royalty agreement: coin-operated radios would be installed in Lewis’s Wigwam Village, and every dime inserted for 30 minutes of play would be sent to Redford as payment.
Old cars scattered around have obviously become part of the appeal. There’s space for guests to park between them.
How do I know so much about the Wigwam #6? Because I stayed there some years back, in my beloved green ’73 LTD.
I love a motel room with high ceilings.
Sorry, I gotta ask. What’s with the swastikas on the postcard wigwams?
The postcard predates WWII and the evil connotations the swastica brings, before that it was a Native American symbol called the whirling logs
It was considered a “good luck” symbol in many cultures Native American and the subcontinent of India.
You can even find old Native American rugs with that symbol woven into them.
Yup, our company did a project in India cooperating with our German branch office. At one point during commissioning they found swastikas scrawled in chalk on the German supplied machinery. They were taken aback but found out that it meant the equipment was accepted for production, like someone writing OK on a machine.
Someday I hope to do a classic car journey and stay at the Wigwam Inn, but I have done Tipi camping in Alberta:
https://www.sundancelodges.com/tipis
It was so bloody cold we never undressed from our motorcycle gear, just took off boots and helmets and crawled into our sleeping bags. If I do that trip again I will be armed with a much larger credit card and stay in a place with heat 🙂
In the townhall of Hull, Mass. there use to be a mosaic tile floor that had a border of swastikas. It was laid in 1923 if my memory is right. At the time it was an Indian symbol of good luck. Hitler forever desecrated the true meaning of the swastika. For that reason, the town of Hull had the floor either altered or removed after getting complaints in the late 80s or early 90s. I thought that it might have been a good opportunity to erect some educational material detailing how the swastika had a long history of goodwill before it’s meaning was hijacked. But I guess for some that were directly affected, the memories were still too fresh.
It was a somewhat popular symbol of good luck before WWII even outside of Native American cultures. The fire station in my hometown near Philadelphia had a swastika on its facade — and still does. It always gave me the creeps. It’s amazing that it was not removed during the war or as part of its aftermath, but it’s still there:
Yours is pointed leftwards, just like the one’s in my family’s church. That seemed to be the usual way to display the symbol until 1930’s Germany.
It was also used by an Irish laundry company, the Swastika Laundry, starting pre-WWII though they continued to use the symbol throughout and after the war. The company was known for its red, swastika-emblazoned electric delivery vans. (I’m sure today’s electric vehicle enthusiasts would approve.)
My family’s Byzantine Catholic Church in Johnstown, PA had swastikas in the floor tiles around the altar. The church was built in 1908, and the swastika’s were reverse from the usual Nazi usage, and shown at a different angle (not 45 degrees).
Like a few other mentions here, the swastika only became something you couldn’t show with the beginning of WWII, although during the 1930’s the Nazi use of the symbol pretty much put paid to anyone else using it for any other purpose.
Jellybean:
What you see as swastikas were probably supposed to be Thunderbirds.
The name Wigwam may have been used instead of Teepee because teepee sounds like a child’s name for a basic bodily function.
This is one of those places I have thought about staying at, but I have had one or two regrettable experiences in 50s motels.
Until recently, I used to pass a store that dealt in Native American artifacts, mostly jewelry, on my visits to central Pennsylvania. I now see that this store has closed. I had visited a few times and bought other things like T-shirts, but never anything expensive like jewelry.
I heard recently that Native American tribes are trying to re-claim possession of many of their artifacts, usually the ones in museums. I hope that store didn’t have it’s inventory “confiscated” by one of the tribes.
No, those are swastikas. His eyes are not deceiving him. It was an important symbol used in numerous cultures before the Nazis sullied it.
The wigwam Village in Kentucky is still there. It’s actually in Cave City Ky. next town over from Horse Cave. I live about 60 miles north of there. I do believe it’s still open too. Just a few miles from Mammoth Cave NP.
That’s Wigwam Village #2. No.1 was torn down.
Yup. Been there, seen that.
https://blog.jimgrey.net/2015/05/08/sleep-in-a-wigwam/
My wife and I are part of a mob that has taken over WW Village #2 for a weekend just about every Fall since some time in the Eighties. We love the fact that much of the original twig furniture is still intact (or mostly, anyway), and that while A/C, heat and color TV is provided, until the advent of the iPhone and its ilk we were blissfully adrift from the workaday world. But lose some, win some: Cave City is no longer in a dry county, so nobody has to make any late-Saturday beer runs to Bowling Green.
When we moved out to Pasadena from Nashville in 2000, we stopped for a look at #6 in Holbrook, at the time functioning only as a daytime exhibit; we were pleased to learn later that it had re-converted to a motel. We also have visited the other survivor in Rialto (actually in San Bernardino, but “Rialto” is classier). That one has gotten modernized and manicured to the max; while we were glad they seem to be succeeding, we could not imagine any of our PowWow shenanigans being tolerated there, and just took some photos and left.
Native Americans used the Swastika in their culture commonly. I know this because my father purchased some pillows adorned with the symbol from a Native American Collection and of course I was initially horrified he would put them out on the couch. The swastika has been used by different and completely unrelated cultures around the globe for thousands of years. Only the Nazis turned it into a symbol for evil 90 years ago.
This post sent me down the rabbit hole of looking other landmarks along the old Route 66, during which I discovered a place called the Vega Motel in Vega, TX. I think they should follow the lead of the Wigwam Motel and park a couple of Vegas out front. 🙂
Although the page I found may be out of date. Further searching makes it look like the Vega Motel closed down. I did find one article about someone attempting to reopen it, but I don’t know what its current status is.
Sweet! I was here back in 2010. Here’s a picture I took. Didn’t stay the night, but would have. Fought an awful rainstorm all day long.
I’ll try again.
Hmm, I see a ’54 Pontiac Chieftain Deluxe, a ’59 Chevy Impala, a ’71 Olds Cutlass, a ’51 (?) Hudson, a ’56 Buick Special, a ’55 Buick Special, a ’53 (?) Studebaker, ’49 Ford and ’73 Ford LTD. Anything else?
I love shots of 59 Chevvies. I got to ride in one as a little guy and I loved those batwings! 56 Buicks were cool to me as well, I came to wonder what those vent ports were for on Buicks.
The thing about 56 Buick’s that I found unique was that it’s the only car I know of that has an emblem telling you the year, make, and model on the front grill.
In the interest of national unity, some Indian tribes gave up using the swastika during WW2, “heritage” or not:
Swastica itself is a Sanskrit word meaning, roughly, “state of being good ” or true or right. The symbol was associated with that word, or concept, for a long time, like millennia, before the Nazis.
In the summer of 2008, my wife and I visited the Southwest to see Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and our relatives in Albuquerque. One night we stayed at this very place – in the teepee with the light blue 1949 or 1950 Ford parked in front of it.
In 2014, we stayed at the one in Kentucky, near Mammoth Cave. The Kentucky place did not have classic cars parked on the grounds.
These units are not terribly roomy inside. That wasn’t an issue in 2008, but by 2014, our two daughters had been born, so they seemed much more cramped.
Pre-war (and even post-war) tourist cabins were seldom “roomy” in the modern sense. FWIW, four of the ‘wams at #2 have two double beds and a usefully enlarged floor-space; families with children typically pick those, though the older kids sometimes opt for a tent out back or a sleeping bag in the car. Despite the perceived hardships, though, we are now seeing some of those children returning with kids of their own
What’s really cramped is the bathroom, definitely a single-occupant proposition no matter what activity is contemplated. The mirror over the sink, mounted at the angle of the wall it’s on, can present a startling image to the badly hungover naked man wanting a shave …
We also stopped in Holbrook to take some photos of the Wigwam Motel and the classic cars back in March of 2007. The cars are largely the same, but they get moved around a bit. This one shows the 56 Buick Special and the 50 or 51 Stude in front of the office.
My favorite car of the bunch, the blue 59 Chevy sedan, is visible in the background.
Sorry, I wrecked your article. My apologies.
Don’t feel that way! Yours was a perfectly valid question, and many readers (myself included) learned something from the responses.
I would love to visit a novelty motel someday.
In keeping with the Native American theme, Here is a picture of a 1961-1962 Chevy Apache 10 pickup truck that I saw in the neighborhood adjacent to my watchmaker in Silver Spring today.
This truck was parked next to a house that was being worked on. It looks like this truck still works for a living. I sadly did not have time for a front shot .