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1950s Postcards Show Former Glory of the American Motel

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In the 1950s, decades before certain photographers made their living capturing the streaked craters of abandoned motel pools, the country's motels, low-slung streaks of mint green and salmon that sat near state highways, actually seemed the height of midcentury chicness. That fact is no more obvious than in the splashy photochrome images on the postcards of the era, wherein ladies with midriff-covering bathing suits and clouds of amply hairspray'd curls lounge around kidney-shaped pools. The good folks at Design Sponge dug up the above postcard (from Motel Bryson in Boise) and a bunch more, a few of which are below.

· The Motel Postcard: a Window Into the 1950s Road Trip [Design Sponge]
· All Dwelling posts [Curbed National]