Staying at the Pine Tree Cottages in 1940


Although I usually just look at the backgrounds when I'm browsing the Duke University site ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions), but this one caught my eye, and I wanted to take a closer look. Let's time-travel to 1940 and go the Pine Tree Cottages Cabins.

I'm not exactly sure where they were, but my best guess is New Jersey, somewhere near Trenton. If you know, please tell me and I'll update this post. Thank you!

My first thought, of course, from the viewpoint of the 21st Century, is the price. Seventy-five cents and one dollar per person, with special family rates. Of course this was a long time ago, so it must have been kinda pricey. I mean, look at that cabin - it has an attached garage, which would have been impressive for a family house in those days. Of course, the artist may have been exaggerating, and the real cabins may not have been as impressive. Still, it says "garages", so there must have been at least some kind of structure to park your car inside of. I've always like garages, and to me they seem the ultimate in luxury, a place for your car to sleep in safety and privacy. People who park their cars outside of their garages have always puzzled me, and has always reminded me of Snoopy sleeping on top of his doghouse, not inside of it.


Anyway, these cabins do seem luxurious. In addition to the fireplace, they have steam heat. Also private toilets (no trudging off to the communal toilets!), and showers. I suppose that as a kid going off to where the showers were would have been an adventure, but as an adult, I like the idea of just stumbling into the shower right there in my cabin. Luxury!

As far as I know, the AAA (American Automobile Association) recommendation was very meaningful. They would go and inspect, and hopefully the place would keep up its standards. This place sounds nice, and I think we should stop.

Since we're from the 21st Century, let's go full-on luxury. Do you have a dollar? I have a five-dollar bill in my wallet, I know, so we can go there and act like the rich folks do. Maybe there will be a kid that we could give a penny to every morning to go get us a newspaper.

Let's see, four miles ahead. Keep your eyes open!

Images from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more