Sunday, December 07, 2008

Round and round

This old photo of a round motel just fascinated me. I always love peeking into people's lives, and in this one, you can peek into a batch of different people's lives, circa...1960-something.

The photo is from an old LIFE magazine and is now online with their archives, but it didn't identify the name and city of the motel. I posted the question to Ask Metafilter and wham, within an hour, the readers there had nailed it down. It was the Villa Roma Motor Hotel on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, built by 1962, torn down in 1982.

A sad loss for the world of coolness. The hotel was like a tip of the hat to "The Jetsons" or something. Like Seattle's Space Needle, it reminds me of the future we never got to have.

Sometimes progress sucks.

3 comments:

Stinkydog said...

The Austin (TX) airport Hilton is round like that. They don't have the openish windows, though.

http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/AUSAHHF-Hilton-Austin-Airport-Texas/index.do

Adrienne said...

I have a real affinity for round buildings, too. My parents met at a round bank in Chicago (http://www.republicebank.com/about/about_us.htm) after my father missed the turn for the bank he really wanted to go to! I loved being in that round building as a child - so fascinating. I also loved visiting cousins at the Marina Towers in downtown Chicago - you know, the round towers that are featured so prominently in movies that are Chicago-based. Today's architecture is so...blah.

Anonymous said...

Whenever I see futuristic buildings like this I feel a bit sad for the fun, hopeful, adventurous future we were promised in the 60's as kids but never actually had.

Generation Jones