As reported in the Morning Journal (here), the demolition of the motel – expected since 2015 – began late last week.
The motel opened in the early 1950s as the Foster House Motel. Originally it catered to traveling salesmen.
Here’s a vintage postcard of the motel, as well as its 1963 Lorain Telephone Directory ad.
The opening of the Ohio Turnpike in the late 1950s, as well as the construction of the new limited access Ohio Route 2 in the 1960s siphoned off much of the through traffic that the Lake Motel and its neighboring U.S. Route 6 inns depended on for their customers. Having lost their main clientele, the motels eventually became run-down, serving in their final days as apartments for people who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. This lead to inevitable criminal activity, and eventual nuisance status for the structures.
I grabbed a few pictures of the Lake Motel in 2016 when its doom was understood to be impending.
And here are the obligatory, depressing Brady Blog Steaming Rubble® shots from Saturday. These are from mid-afternoon.
By the time I went by it again during the storm a little later, the view was appropriately bleaker.
That leaves the former Parkview Motel as the Last Motel Standing – but not for long.
4 comments:
Pretty much 99% of the time when hotels or motels turn into apartments they lead to the downfall of that particular structure.Then the neighborhood runs down and it leads to drugs and criminal activity.This was a cool looking 1950's style motel.To bad it got run down.I can only wish that the Dick Clark Road Show stayed there in 1959 after they performed at the Lorain Arena.Does anybody know if they did?As it would've still been a classy motel at that time.
The proximity of the motels along US 6 there to the Arena certainly would have made it conceivable. The Dick Clark Caravan had two concerts in Columbus the next day and perhaps they rested up before the very long drive down US 42 (no continuous I-71 to Columbus yet).
I went back and read my post about the concert:
https://danielebrady.blogspot.com/2012/05/dick-clark-caravan-of-stars-comes-to.html
Unfortunately it reminded me that there was no follow-up coverage of the concert.
What is the fate of the house in the background?
The house will remain, as that is where the owners of the (now demolished) motel live.
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