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Blue Top Motel Lives on in New Book
To
stay at the Blue Top Motel in Coralville was to step back into the past. Owned
and operated by the Laurence Smith family since 1952, the little motel near Iowa
City was a favorite destination for travelers from around the world for more than
50 years. Even Bob Hope was a guest.
Though
the motel closed for business in 1996, it has not been forgotten. Artist and photographer
Lois Weiderrecht-Finke has published a book celebrating the longtime Iowa landmark.
Supported with a grant from the Iowa Arts Council, Blue Top Motel is
a collection of stories contributed by second-generation owner/managers Larry
and Judy Smith and a foreword by well-known Iowa author Mary Swander.
She worked on the book in stages over a period of four years. In addition to a Mini Grant from the Iowa Arts Council, she and her network of people involved in the project worked to secure private funding to make publishing the book possible.
“We
had private funding, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to do it,”
she says. “It turned out to be more costly than I thought. We were going
to do it in black and white, but decided it really needed to be done in color,
even though that is expensive. We decided if we were going to do it, we were going
to do it right.”
Weiderrecht-Finke was a frequent guest of the Blue Top Motel when she commuted to Iowa City as a fine arts student in the 1990s. Now, her appearances to promote the book draw people with similar memories of the Blue Top Motel, or other motels like it across the U.S., she said. Stories typically recall memories of honeymoons or summer trips with the family.
“Staying
at the Blue Top Motel was a little like going home,” Weiderrecht-Finke writes.
“You drove up, stepped inside the office. A small, furry dog was barking.
People were glad to see you. When you were away from home, Blue Top was a good
place to be.”
Originally
named the Blue Top Motor Court, Blue Top Motel was built in the early 1940s when
owners Gustave and Iva Falk built a number of small white cottages on their property.
Nine cottages, including one duplex, were built in a semicircle facing a circular
drive. Explosive growth in the area, combined with the changing attitudes of modern
travelers, led to the sale of the property in 1996 to make way for the Town Square
Center development. Eight of the original cottages were donated to the Crooked
Creek Christian Camp near Washington, Iowa, where they now house young campers.
“The book is a salute to Blue Top and what it meant to its owners and guests, friends and neighbors, and to the community for so many years, a reminder of times past, when a row of small, neat cottages meant welcome rest for road-weary travelers,” Weiderrecht-Finke writes in the book’s introduction.
The book costs $19.95 and can be purchased by contacting Prairie Lights Books, (800) 295-BOOK, Iowa Book, (319) 337-4188 or Lane’s End Publishing, (319) 367-5989.
