Two Girls in a Motel Room, Summer Vacation, 1950s

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Two Girls in a Motel Room, Summer Vacation, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Two Girls in a Motel Room, Summer Vacation, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1955–1962

AA-2026-DC6498

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Two girls occupy a motel room somewhere in America during what was almost certainly a family summer road trip, the kind the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 made newly practical and the motel industry was furiously expanding to accommodate. The older girl has claimed the red vinyl chair with the ease of someone who has decided this is her throne for the duration, while the younger one sprawls on the bed in a matching orange outfit, a small doll stationed on the nightstand beside a brass drum lamp that the motel decorator selected to convey a sense of luxury. A wall-mounted air conditioning unit hangs above the window — the signal amenity that separated a respectable motor court from a roadside cabin — and a baseboard heater below the window suggests the room was engineered for both seasons, because motels in this era were betting on year-round business for the first time. The floral curtains, the pale blue cinder-block walls, and the red-and-chrome furniture are a period specification so precise that any motel designer of 1958 could have invoiced this room from a catalog. The girls look entirely unbothered, which is the correct attitude toward a room that exists solely to be slept in and then left behind on the way to somewhere else.

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