This small motel was located just outside of the eastern limits of the City of Brockville along Highway Number 2. Unfortunately we do not have much history on this business, and if anyone knows anything about it we would appreciate hearing from you.
We are fairly sure that it was converted into individual apartments in the early 1970’s.
The Long Beach Motel is the last stop on our drive through the southern part of Elizabethtown along Highway No. 2 going from East to west.
This hotel is now gone and nothing remains of a building that held wedding receptions, dances, great meals and rooms for overnight travelers.
It started out as a small two story hotel and restaurant with rooms attached. Unfortunately there was a fire and the eastern part of the building burned and was removed leaving only the main building hat now stands today.
We are very short on the history of the Long Beach Motel, the name was later changed to The Flying Dutchman. The one thing that we do have are some photos of this one time great motel.
A Brief History of Motels
The 1950s and 1960s was the pinnacle of the motel industry in the United States and Canada. As older mom-and-pop motor hotels began adding newer amenities such as swimming pools or color TV (a luxury in the 1960s), motels were built in wild and impressive designs. In-room gimmicks such as the coin-operated Magic Fingers vibrating bed were briefly popular; introduced in 1958, these were largely removed in the 1970s due to vandalism of the coin boxes. The American Hotel Association (which had briefly offered a Universal Credit Card in 1953 as forerunner to the modern American Express card) became the American Hotel & Motel Association in 1963.
As many motels vied for their place on busy highways, the beach-front motel instantly became a success. In major beach-front cities such as Jacksonville, Florida, Miami, Florida, and Ocean City, Maryland, rows of colorful motels such as the Castaways, in all shapes and sizes, became commonplace. [Wikipedia]
Motel building boomed in the ‘50s and ‘60s and establishments began to offer families the adventure they were seeking right at the site. Tourists could engage in recreation at the motel site, keep their cars outside the door, lock their belongings in the room, and employ a chain lock to keep out intruders; adventure and security offered in one package. The enormously popular Holiday Inn formula moved the trend in lodging more toward the old hotel form and started eroding the original motel form. Motels bypassed by the interstate system left once thriving businesses [America’s Roadside Lodging: The Rise and Fall of the Motel Lori Henderson]
This motel still exists on the south side of the road, but today is under different ownership. It was modern, popular and was a busy spot before the newer motels opened to the north of Brockville next to Hwy 401. I
t also had a very good Sunday brunch, which was attended by people after their church services finished.