Lake Motel Checks Out for Good

It took a while, but it’s finally check-out time for the Lake Motel.

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.