Chicago's Shoreline Motels

By Amy Cavanaugh in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 11, 2012 8:00PM

When tourists visit Chicago, it's to go to museums and restaurants, see a sports event, and walk around neighborhoods. Going to the beach probably isn't the reason they came here. But in the 1950s and 1960s, Chicago built 13 Shoreline Motels to accomodate visitors wanting to soak up the sun. Forgotten Chicago has a great piece on these motels, and has written a second post about the North Side motels. They plan to write two more posts.

The whole post is worth reading, but here are a few tidbits that stood out:

• Zoning regulations and Lake Shore Drive's extension contributed to their rise.

Until a 1953 change in zoning regulations, motels were not allowed within Chicago city limits.1 Once the zoning law was changed, the Shoreline Motels all opened within a relatively brief 10-year time period starting with Chicago’s first motel, The Sands, on the North Side, which opened December 3, 1955.

Besides the change in zoning, there are several reasons that numerous Shoreline Motels were constructed in Chicago during this brief period. Perhaps most importantly, the first sections of the region’s expressway system, and the extension of Lake Shore Drive north to Hollywood Avenues were both completed in the 1950s. These new highways allowed visitors arriving by car to travel to and around Chicago with relative ease, and for the first time visitors were able to stay (depending then, as now, on traffic) more conveniently in areas farther from the Loop, including near the lakefront.

• They had decidedly un-Midwestern names.

A characteristic of many of these Shoreline Motels was marketing that suggested a destination far from the Midwest, with names such as Breakers, Sands, Tides, and Tropicana, and architecture and images that would not have been out of place in California or Florida. Besides their locations near the lake, Shoreline Motels also emphasized their newness, in contrast to the rest of Chicago’s existing (and aging) hotel accommodations.

• The motels are not to be confused with Shoreline Hotels.

Besides a swimming pool, cocktail lounge, and coffee shop or restaurant, Shoreline Motels generally offer limited amenities compared to Chicago’s shoreline hotels, such as the Edgewater Beach, The Drake or the Conrad Hilton, which often offer multiple eating and drinking venues, a shopping arcade, bowling alley, beauty salon, large ballrooms, and a nightclub or showroom.