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Hotel Flashback: The Holiday Inn Sign of the 1950s

April 16, 2012 at 2:40 PM | by | Comments (2)

Here at HotelChatter, we don't just love luxury and brand new hotels, nosiree. We've also got a serious fascination with retro spots, hotels of yore and even drive-up motels. This week, we'll be exploring a few such hotels through found postcards and pamphlets from the 1950s and '60s

There once was a time when you could sleep over at a Holiday Inn in almost every major US town and quite a few foreign cities as well. They were mainly drive-up, motel-style affairs, but their slogan spoke to a higher ambition: "The World's Innkeeper."

This postcard comes from just about as middle America as you can possibly get in the 1950s: Youngstown, Ohio. These days, there's only one Holiday Inn in Youngstown (though there's 5 Holiday Inn Expresses) and it's at the other end of town, in a far more modern building with far more modern Holiday Inn branding.

The kitschy, lit-arrow sign you see below may sadly be long gone, but the people who were kids and staying at Holiday Inns during this period are still around, for the most part. They're the ones retired, driving the country in an RV perhaps, and still looking out for the glowing green Holiday Inn logo.

[Vintage document scan: HotelChatter]

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Kemmons Wilson owned the sign

We produced annual franchise meetings for Holiday Inn in the early '70's.

Kemmons was certainly a visionary. He "owned" the "Great Sign" and access to the 800 reservation phone number. Everything else was up to the franchisee.

If they kept the standards high, the were allowed to use the sign.

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RFRANKLIN on April 18, 2012 at 10:13 AM #Permalink

More on Holiday Inn of the 1950s

The American Sign Museum owns two-thirs (all but tower with the star) of a Holiday Inn sign that was originally located in Las Vegas.  it was donated to the museum by Tom Young, Young Electric Sign from the company's famous boneyard.  We also have what I was told by Tom Cummings, Jr. (deceased), patriarch of Cummings, Inc. who manufactured 90% plus of the Holiday Inn signs, is a one-of-a-kind 8-ft. stylized version of the original sign.  Mr. Cummings told me that Cummings had made it for Holiday Inn to take to tradeshows and other PR events.
Lastly, we videotaped Kemmons Wilson talking about the history of Holiday Inn a year before he passed.  He stated that much of the success of his franchise was due to the iconic sign--a beacon in the night promising you a clean room and a restaurant.
Tod Swormstedt on April 30, 2012 at 9:06 PM #Permalink

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