T U Auto Court, Cache Creek, BC. postcard, late 1930s.
Auto courts preceded the motel, or motor hotel of the 1950s, and followed rough and ready camping with a car in the 1920s. They weren't always out in nature, like campsites are today, rather they generally in town: in Nanaimo the U-Court, still standing but as very low-income rental cabins, was right off the Island Highway in what is considered today to be the inner city.
They were individual little cabins with a central building for laundry, exorbitant groceries, toilets. I've stayed in many over the years from Nova Scotia to California. A famous one, the 2400 on Kingsway in Vancouver, is being embedded into an area redevelopment plan, as is McMorran's Auto Court in Cordova Bay, a fairly toney part of Victoria.
McMorran's Auto Court, Cordova Bay, Victoria, BC. 1939 postcard. ;)
City of Calgary Archives. M001201. Plan for the Sunshine Auto Court on Elbow River, 1940
This drawing (click to enlarge) is of an auto court on the Elbow River right by the Exhibition Grounds, now the Stampede. It had it all: gas pump, store, tent space, trailer bays, cabins single and joined, lots of play space, sunshine and, of course, the beautiful Elbow River.
There were many auto courts lining MacLeod Trail, eventually joined up to make little motels – the last demolished just a couple of years ago. This is too bad. I once was put up in an auto court in Austin, Texas which had been transformed into a boutique auto court. The central parking lot was a pool and garden, the cabins had become terribly elegant.
Americans do this kind of nostalgia for their romantic mid-twentieth century past so very well. It is all one with wearing faded levi's with a $2000 blazer – the Ralph Laurenisation of a nation's recent history. For striving cities such as Calgary, history is something to be eagerly erased, as if the intimacy of the auto court for travellers in a big city is somehow too close to a less affluent past.