Modern Love...

Lein's Cabins a.k.a Haven Modern Motel

I know Lein's Cabins -- a.k.a. Haven Modern Motel -- isn't/wasn't located in Fort Atkinson proper, but I'm pretty sure anyone who lived in Fort between 1931 and 2012 has a memory of the cute-turned-spooky little "Flintstone's Village" on Highway 12 South, between Fort and Whitewater.

Lein's Modern Motel Office and Restaurant building circa 1950s. 
Photo courtesy of the Collection of Vern Zech.

The same building shown above in its later years.

Seeing it in operation in its heyday (above) the Lein's Motel doesn't look spooky at all! In fact it looks charming and welcoming! I would LOVE to have stayed there! But after it went out of business in the 1970s, it sat vacant and deteriorating for many, many years, the woods around it closing in and reclaiming the property until it looked like the set of a horror movie (see right).

The property, about 5 miles South of Fort Atkinson, was part of farmland acreage owned by Lloyd and Myrtle Lein in the early 1930s.

To augment their farming income, the Leins used a portion of their property nestled along US Route 12 (which, in the days before Interstate highways and bypasses, was a main route between Chicago and Minneapolis) and built a small gas station and a couple of overnight cabins out by the road. Year after year they would build more cabins as business picked up and by the 1950s they had 20+ little cabins on their land.

The larger frontmost building -- the one we all remember out by the road -- was the Motel Office and Restaurant. In the early days there were two gas pumps right out by the road so the front office also served as the gas station.

We all remember the buildings as being white in color, but according to an article in The Daily Jefferson County Union featuring an interview with Betty (Lein) Perkins, daughter of the original proprietors, who grew up on this property (see link below), the cabins were originally tan with a rough stucco exterior. Later they were smoothed down and painted white.

For a full Daily Jefferson County Union article about the history and eventual demolition of these motels, click here: Daily Union Article.

Lein's Cabins, as the rooftop sign says, also begat "Rocky's Eats" in the front building, for travelers along Hwy 12.
Photo courtesy of the Collection of Vern Zech.

Here's a similar view, taken around 2006.
Note: the post for the EATS sign was still standing.

Originally the Motel -- or Tourist Lodge, or Motor Lodge, as these roadside attractions were popularly known in the forties and fifties -- was called Lein's Cabins, as is evidenced by the roof sign shown in the black and white photo above.  The word "modern" appeared in smaller letters beneath "cabins." Later it became Lein's Modern Motel, as you can see in the color photograph at top. Interesting in the black and white photo is the decorative, curly-cue topper that used to sit on the rooftop sign above the word LEIN'S, not seen in later photographs. One wonders if the signage was outlined in neon back then, the way it would be in later years. The fact that there's a wire running from the main building to the Rocky's EATS sign, one can probably assume, yes. Rocky was the nickname of the gentleman who ran the restaurant for many years. Mr. Lein also had a neon business in the old barn that used to stand at the back of the property (sans the hay loft) where he made all the neon signage himself, as well as signage for other businesses in the area.

Detail of Pueblo-style 
roof-supporting
wooden logs.  At Lein's
Cabins these were
probably for decoration.

The cabins were designed to resemble Adobe huts, the type of which the Pueblo people of the Southwest United States built from sticks and wooden poles covered in clay and mud, (though modernized by the time Lein's Cabins were built -- they weren't literally mud, but brick and stucco -- complete with wooden poles poking out from the roofline). In later years these poles had been sawn off, as shown in the color photo above. The Lein's reportedly had seen this type of building in postcards from similar motels out West (source, the Daily Union article).

The beauty of this style of motel, and probably the explanation for the word "Modern" in the later signage, is that they are stand-alone units, which shared no walls with neighbors. Most motels (not just then, but even today) were housed in the confines of a single building divided into several rooms, each room sharing a wall with the room next to it. So it was considered modern in the 1920s and 30s to have each customer's room surrounded by his own four walls. No neighborly noise.

Originally Lein's Cabins' front building served food and gas. Despite this postcard (circa 1930s)
being a sepia-toned photo,  the restaurant appears to be its original tan color. Note no signage on the roof.

By the 1950s there were over 20 cabins on the property.
 (Note the addition of the neon roof sign and the new white paint job on all the cabins.)

Lein's Inspiration

Postcard from Pueblo Motor Lodge, New Mexico. Similar Adobe styling to Lein's Cabins.

In the days of Route 66 (and Route 12), between the 1930s and the 1970s, individual "huts" and "cabins" and, in some cases, "wigwams," built along the roadside for use as Motor Lodges popped up all across the country.

Wigwam Village was actually a motel chain, with its teepee-shaped cabins, all across the country.

One of the most famous (or infamous) "modern" motor lodges was The Coral Court in St Louis. The claim-to-fame of Coral Court was not only that each "room" was an individual unit with no neighboring walls, but that each unit had it's own garage. Probably started as a newfangled "catering to the motorist" bonus feature, it soon became a way for people to "hide" their cars when they weren't supposed to be at a motel in the first place! I believe this is where the phrase "Motel No-Tell" came from.

Postcard from Coral Court Motor Lodge, Route 66, St Louis. Complete with individual garages for your privacy.

But getting back to Lein's Cabins... 

The following information was gathered from the Daily Jefferson County Union website. Click here to read the whole article. In the late 50s, Leins got out of the motel business and sold their little village. A family from Rockford owned it for a few years and changed the sign to read Haven Modern Motel, replacing the neon that used to read Lein's. Around 1962, the property was purchased by Donald and Ruth McCord, who ran it -- still as the Haven Modern Motel -- for the next ten years. (Personal note: Mrs. McCord used to shop at Piggly Wiggly when I was a bagboy there, and Mr. McCord always drove Cadillacs, which once littered the property.) I believe they kept the restaurant portion open until the early 1970s, but by then Highway 12 was no longer a main route, except to get from Fort to Whitewater, (and there was no need to spend the night in between.) The Interstate System, initiated in the 1950s by President Eisenhower, made it easier and faster to move around the country without stopping. Little "Mom-and-Pop" Motor Lodges disappeared as quickly as they arrived. As for the Haven, it struggled to remain "modern." Somewhere along the timeline the canvas awnings were removed from the main building and the wooden posts that protruded from the top were sawed off. Perhaps this was to make way for more modern-for-the-times neon decor. The awnings and wooden posts were probably removed to update the look of the place in the 40s and 50s (?) If you look closely at this photo (above left) taken in the 1980s, you can see neon tubing casting a shadow as it runs along the top edge of the main building. The smaller rental units were not outlined in neon.

I'll bet this was a beautiful roadside sight at night as one drove one's 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air at the then-legal speed limit of 70mph coming down Highway 12 heading to Whitewater to meet Peggy Sue at the college, and seeing that neon glow while the AM radio blared:

"I guess I just wasn't made for these times."

~Brian Wilson, from The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album.

Amen, Brian!

Computer-generated. I can dream can't I?

Permanent Vacancy and Deterioration

Detail photo of surviving Haven neon outlining the top of the main building/restaurant, circa mid-1980s.

Above is a close up of some of the remaining neon before the buildings fell into total disrepair. These photos were shot when I went to college at UW Whitewater (circa 1986). As I drove by it on the way to school everyday, I -- like hundreds of other local travelers along 12 -- always wished I could buy the place and restore it. The neon above was probably white, based on the white tubing. Red neon, on the other hand, was always in clear tubing; the neon gas was colored red. The white neon was in white-tinted tubing in order to tone down the blinding brightness of it. (Something I learned at UW Whitewater.) The inset picture to the right shows detail of the Vacancy/No Vacancy sign that stood by the roadside in front of the Haven Motel. Although the glass is missing from the word Vacancy, the No tubing is hanging on by a thread in this 1980s photo. The fact that it's clear tubing leads me to believe the neon glowed red. Most of the signage on this property at the time was painted red, white and black (good Fort Atkinson High School colors) so I'm only guessing the neon tubing around the premises was red and white, which were popular neon colors. 

Also of note in the inset photo above, there appears to be small metal rails above and beneath the word NO. One can assume a fitted metal cover was designed to slide over these rails to obliterate the word NO when there was indeed VACANCY at the motel. Clever eh?

Another neon sign hidden beneath the pines in the 1980s.

This neon sign (above) was not attached to any of the buildings, but stood on a post to the south of the main Office/Restaurant building out front. There was a similar free standing sign to the north of the Office building which read "Rocky's EATS". The fact that the "Private Bath" portion of the sign was painted on a wooden plank and bolted onto the sheet metal sign leads me to believe this was done to cover up "Rocky's Eats" after Lein's had sold the business. I have also seen photos where the signs say "drive-in" above the word "vacancy." Perhaps the wooden bolt-on signs were added to cover up "drive-in," as the phrase may have confused motorists into thinking it was a drive in restaurant (?) The restaurant was sit-down (perhaps they had carry-outs) and served 32 patrons at a time.

Speaking of the private baths, each cabin had it's own bathroom (the signs don't lie!) Having surveyed many of the cabins before their demise, I believe the bathrooms consisted of a toilet and a hand sink and a standup shower. The remnants of one of the cabins (shown in the photo at left) gives us a glimpse of how the bathrooms looked -- at least in their last incarnation. They were painted in a pastel turquoise/green color with matching tiles and black trim. Very 1950s. I don't know if all the cabins had the same interior paint scheme, since they weren't all built at the same time. As mentioned before, as the motel business grew, Mr Lein built more and more cabins, maintaining the consistent Pueblo styling for the exterior, but who knows what the interiors looked like? According to the Daily Union Article, some famous 20th century names indeed saw the interiors of these little cottages: The (Von) Trapp Family Singers (of whom The Sound of Music is said to be based upon) stayed here in the forties; world heavyweight champion boxer Joe Louis reportedly ate in the restaurant; and apparently members of the Kennedy family made the Haven their rest stop of choice when visiting Rosemary Kennedy during her years living at the nearby St. Colletta Home in Jefferson.

What are you waiting for, come on in already...

Interior view of one of the rental cabins, circa 2006. Roll mouse over this image for detail of furnishings left behind.

By the look of things, prior to its demolition, many of the Haven's cabins had pretty much fallen down or been reclaimed by nature. Surely there was a certain amount of vandalism that went on too, as the property was unattended for many years. The photo above shows the condition of the interior sometime around 2006. Most of the cabins had no roofs by this point, and it looks like the interior plaster had all fallen off the tile walls. Right up until demolition many of the cabins still had their beds in place (the metal frames and springs of the beds, anyway), dozens of those fiberglass molded chairs from the 1950s, and several television sets. Roll your mouse over the above image to see the type of furnishings that were left behind in these cottages.

A basic single rental unit looked like this: Cabin #11.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe there were 22 cabins when the Haven closed its doors for good. They varied in size, from single-bed units to double-bed units. I seem to recall a large "adjoining" unit on the South end of the property which had two separate entrances and a shared wall. And way in the back there were three or four units that looked to be "economy" -sized, about 1/2 the size of a standard single unit. These consisted of pretty much just a bed and a bathroom. Near the rear of the property was a small bungalow. I remember the McCord's actually lived on-site, in that bungalow, because I visited them a couple of times around the late seventies. Years later, shortly before demolition had begun, the house was a pile of timber. Nobody had lived there for years, so I assume the house was knocked down intentionally to prevent it being occupied by vagrants, thrill seekers and other ne'er-do-wells. I'm not sure if the house was the original farmhouse that was here before the cabins were built. There was a also a barn located in the south lot at the back of the property from the farming days, but when the motel was built, the barn was eventually used as a neon sign workshop. Leins had removed the hay-loft portion of the barn so it didn't make the property look like a farm from the road. They wanted the motel to look "modern." The barn was eventually torn down, probably to make way for more cabins. In fact, the only thing left standing on this site today -- as of 2013 -- is a small brick shed which stood between the house and the barn, way at the back of the property.

A small group of rental units, circa 1980s. Long out of commission by this time but still salvageable.

Gravel drive still visible, circa 1980s.

By the 1980s, the cabins had been sitting for over a decade unattended. Given another twenty years the one-time prairie-like landscape would become a thick overgrown woods. The trees literally grew through the floors of the cabins and eventually out through the roof. The above photo, and the one to the left, show the Haven Modern Motel units after only about ten or fifteen years of inactivity. Looking at the photo above, you can see where the wooden posts used to protrude above the door, having been sawed off many years before. It appears there used to be canopies over the windows, as evidenced by a wooden support mounted above each of them. At one time, the Main Office/Restaurant had a red awning all around it. I would assume the awnings over the windows of the rental cabins matched that style. Also visible in the above photo, in the upper right corner of the cabin, is a small cylindrical tin chimney, suggesting the units were heated with stoves, although I'm told the operation usually closed during the winter months. Based on the photo to the left, the driveway and parking lots were gravel. I believe there was space next to or in front of each cabin for customers to park their cars, somewhat like you would find at a campground.

But alas, all of us who had driven by the Haven day after day wishing we could buy the place and refurbish it -- or hope, at least, that someone else would -- had our enthusiasm curbed when we read in 2011 that the place was going to be demolished, or were surprised one day when we drove by and saw the bulldozers. Once they cleared out the brush and the cabins were visible again it was a beautiful sight! Even though we knew it was stage one of the demolition process, we all kind of hoped, "maybe someone will see this and save it!" Oh to be an eccentric millionaire! But all too soon it was leveled.

"Polly! What have you done to my hotel?!" ~ Basil Fawlty.    Demolition circa 2012.

 And today...

*crickets... crickets... crickets... crickets...*

Thank you for visiting. Y'all come back now, y'hear?