Looking through the postcard collection housed on the fourth floor of the Lauderdale Library, I came across two cards showing the world's first Holiday Inn, which opened in Memphis on August 1, 1952.
One card (above) is a color photograph of the complex at 4941 Summer Avenue, and the other (below) is an illustration that was apparently made from the photograph, since the view is the same (though it includes a look at the lobby, a typical room, and an aerial view). Perhaps this was the only place you could stand on Summer — a busy road since it was also State Highways 64, 70, and 79 — if you were taking pictures or making drawings of this complex, which wasn't called a "motel," by the way. The official name was Holiday Inn Hotel Courts.
You immediately notice that the illustration has been "cleaned up." Gone are the telephone poles and wires stretching across the photograph. Gone too are all the automobiles parked out front. For one of the most popular motel — okay, hotel court — chains in America, the second postcard makes it seem rather lonely. Not even a customer in the lobby.
At the same time, the artist of the card below added a curious (and incorrect) detail. Surrounding the star atop the sign is a circular framework of some sort. Now the so-called "great sign" — designed in Memphis by Balton Sign company to Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson's precise specifications — actually had a metal framework around the star, but it was five-sided, not circular. That framework, though clearly visible in other (better) images of this property that I've seen, is completely invisible on the photographic card shown above. So already we've learned — if you've been paying attention at all — that neither card shows the sign very well.
What's most worrisome, though, to a historian who frets about details, is the information on the back. The card above announces that this is indeed a view of the Holiday Inn Hotel Courts at 4941 Summer, and then brags about its features, which include: 450 rooms and 450 baths (from which we can infer: okay, each room has a bath). But with this many rooms, that made this Holiday Inn larger than The Peabody. Could this possibly be true?
Ah, but wait. On the back, the card also mentions "3 other locations in Memphis" and within two years Wilson did indeed construct almost identical properties on the major highways leading into Memphis. Holiday Inn North opened at 4022 Highway 51 North, Holiday Inn South opened at 2300 S. Bellevue (or Highway 51 South), and the somewhat misnamed Holiday Inn West opened at 980 South Third (or Highway 61 South).
But what about the room count? Well, that's if you counted ALL of the hotel rooms at all four locations. (I might as well mention here that the South location was smaller than the rest, with only 76 rooms, and the West location was somewhat larger, with 132. But most of the original "hotel courts" had 120 rooms.
Even then, you get 448 rooms, so they just rounded up it.
The postcards also note that Holiday Inn offered something called "pleasure eating." It's hard to see on the cards, but that rather unusual slogan also runs across the front of the building, just above the entrance.
Both cards, finally, present something of a mystery. If you really squint, you can see the name "Stewart's" painted in red on the front of the building, followed by what appears to be a giant doughnut. Was this part of the "pleasure eating" offered to patrons here? I need to look into that, but I'll save that topic for another day. Haven't I done enough already?
Oh, by the way: Holiday Inn sold the property you see here in 1973. The place operated as a Royals Oaks Motel until 1994, when the entire complex was demolished. Family Funeral Care stands on the site today.
