In a mobile nation, hotels and motels have become way-stations, luxurious homes and markers of despair. While public lodging is not unique to America, the range of its meanings nonetheless deserves scrutiny as keys to a changing landscape Hotels once invited travelers to any town that claimed a train stop and a future.

Luxurious accommodations and celebrities have been associated with metropolitan hotels of global prestige since the nineteenth century—the Plaza and Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan, the Willard in Washington, DC, Palmer House in Chicago, IL, the St.

Francis in San Francisco, CA and the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, among others. Downtown hotels originally catered to businessmen, although wives and families were reunited at exurban resorts like the Breakers in Palm Beach and the Greenbriar in West Virginia which offered elegant accommodations, fine meals and select company.

Divisions of gender and class in both hotels and ever-expanding resorts have changed along with the workforce and family travel since the Second World War. Elite hotels have also figured as settings for novels, plays and movies, with the Plaza a favorite for children (Eloise, Kay Thompson, 1955; Home Alone, 1990), and adults’ (playwright Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, movie 1971); the St. Francis was a model for television’s 1980s series Hotel.

Hotels have created the landscape of resort cities like Las Vegas and Miami Beach. In smaller cities, historic luxury once perhaps subsidized by local governments seeking prestige, has become part of downtown revitalization, while new hotels nationwide compete for architectural renown and business. Hence, John Portman’s Atlanta Peachtree Plaza became associated with atrium hotels, while the Bonaventure in Los Angeles became the type specimen for postmodernism to Fredric Jameson. Specialized boutique hotels and family-run bed and breakfasts are perceived to provide a more European ambience.

Hotel chains have played a major role in this commerce. Major chains linked ownership and management of urban prestige hotels by the 1920s, although most operated under independent names. Conrad Hilton expanded between the wars from a Texas base to buy the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and other prestige hotels while extending his scientific management through leases and management contracts worldwide in the postwar period; many hotels carried the Hilton name. Other major American-based chains include the Sheraton ITT and luxury specializations like the Omni, Westin and the global Ritz-Carlton. Hotel and motel properties have also been targets for foreign investment, as well as 1990s incursions of upscale chains like Nikko and Swissotel.

Hotels also have reflected divisions in American society—luxury is available for a price that distinguishes a suite in the Beverly Wilshire from a night’s accommodation at the YMCA. Hotels also were segregated in many major American cities—small Southern towns might have no public accommodations for blacks at all until the Inter-state Accommodations Act of 1965. Despite their urban fame, Americans have also been prejudiced against hotels as places to “live,” whose residents seemingly reject the domestic home and its duties. Residential hotels were discouraged in most cities by the turn of the nineteenth century Later, SRO (single room occupancy) and welfare hotels became known as urban blights. Literature, films (Midnight Cowboy, 1969; Barton Fink, 1991; LA Confidential, 1994) and crime television have used a range of hotels to map out social diversity division and trajectories in the city.