GREENFIELD — Before there was a Hilton Inn or an Embassy Suites, hundreds and maybe thousands of motels dotted the roadsides of America’s U.S. highways. U.S. Highway 40, also known as the Old National Road, had its share of evening rest stops — the Shenandoah Motel, the Oak Leaf Motel, the Liberty Motel and the Shamrock Motel.
The Hancock County Historical Society, located in the Chapel in the Park at 28 Apple St., celebrates that history with its exhibit, “Hotels and Motels of Hancock County,” open now through mid-summer.
Michael Kester, President of the Historical Society, began his study of motels in Hancock County in 2019, and eventually identified more than 25 in Greenfield, but also in Gem, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, Cleveland, McCordsville and Fortville.
“And it just got bigger and bigger,” Kester said.
As a child, he and his family had often driven west on U.S. 40 to shop at Eastgate Shopping Center, just inside I-465 East.
“Between here and there was basically nothing but motels,” Kester said.
In the midst of his research, Kester was mulling over a project that would get the community involved. While planning the exhibit, a photograph from the inside of the old Columbia Hotel dining room caught his eye.
The Columbia Hotel, also located on U.S. 40, was a Greenfield fixture from the year of its construction in 1895 to its destruction by fire in 1960.
Kester remembers walking by it almost every day as a child.
“I used to be a paper boy,” Kester said. “The newspaper office was located on Main Street. I used to walk by there to go to the cigar store and get some candy when I was a kid.”
In the photograph, Kester noticed a wide wallpaper border along one wall and thought a recreation of that might make a suitable background for the exhibit.
Kester reached out to Greenfield-Central High School, and made contact with art teacher Lisa Sears.
Sears, the sponsor of the National Art Honor Society for the high school, thought it would be a nice project for her students. To earn an Art Honor Society tassel to wear at graduation, students must participate in four art-related projects through the course of the year. Recreating an antique wallpaper border was just the thing.
“I like history a lot, and I was intrigued by that,” Sears said. “We looked up color schemes from that era and tried to recreate it.”
Using stencils, paint and a roll of paper, Sears and her students eventually produced two six-foot lengths of border which they adhered to cardboard. The border is now part of the exhibit at the Historical Society Museum.
The museum opens for the season on April 3, and Kester has kept busy preparing for the grand spring re-opening with dusting and de-bugging. A quick tour of the facility shows off ceiling plaster repairs and new paint, new shades and a newly-installed automated projection screen for films or presentations.
A glass-and-wood case, which once housed bibles, is now home to a shell collection originally displayed at the old Carnegie Library (now Carnegie’s restaurant). The bibles will find a new haven in another case.
“Curation in progress is what I call it,” Kester said.
“Hotels and Motels of Hancock County” features the wallpaper border, photographs from hotels and motels past, menus and a variety of postcards advertising motels, many of which are long gone. Most travelers stayed at motels right off the interstate exits.
“It was a battle between U.S. 40 and I-70,” Kester reflected. “I-70 was the death knell for U.S. Highways.”
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Did you know — The word ‘motel,’ a word blend of motorist and hotel, typically meant a place to stopover for a night while en route to whatever destination travelers were headed.
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