Motels, known then as tourist courts or motor courts, also proliferated in the 1950s, and a tourist court culture soon emerged, with guests mingling in grassy picnic areas or on pool decks surrounded by guestrooms. These events included the Valentine’s Day Fox Hunt in 1949 which gained national attention and lasted until the 1970s, and the Pirates Jamboree in the early 1950s and the weeklong annual spring festival with parades, dances, costume contests and fish fries from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras.(7) Despite its rich history, the Carolinian fell into disrepair and was demolished in April 2001, replaced by beachfront vacation homes. The hotel’s management wanted to encourage more business in the offseason-still a priority of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau today-by helping create events and festivals. The Carolinian opened in Nags Head in 1947 and offered the novelties of baths and telephones in every room and a dining room that overlooked the ocean. “The Carolinian was the place to go and be seen,” she added. The history of the place is embedded in the guest experience.” The inn is currently on the National Register of Historic Places.īy 1950, there were 10 hotels and 14 motels in the Outer Banks, with a combined capacity of 1,000 guests and 930 guests, respectively.(6) Jamie Chisholm, president of the Outer Banks Hotel and Motel Association, says that the full-service hotels that opened in the late 1940s and 1950s were the “hot spots” on the beach where visitors and locals alike danced and listened to live music.
#Surfside hotel nag head windows
(5)Īccording to Laik LePera, senior vice-president and regional business manager at Village Realty, “We take into consideration the history of the property in everything we do, from how we manage the grounds, to maintaining the original windows to still using room keys. The inn – now relocated across the beach road – has been owned by the Lawrence family since 1988 and is managed by Village Reality it is the Outer Banks’ oldest hotel in continuous operation as a lodging establishment.
Midgett and Ernest Jones and renamed the First Colony Inn. Hotels of this era were wooden structures built on pilings, and they featured wide porches where guests could enjoy the cool ocean breezes.(4) Indicative of this type of architecture, Leroy’s Seaside Inn in Nags Head was purchased in 1937 by C.P. With the advent of new roads, bridges and ferries beginning in the early 1920s, the Outer Banks experienced significant growth in the volume of visitors. But by the turn of the Twentieth Century, newer visitors began building their cottages by the ocean. Many of the regular visitors built summer cottages along the sound shore due to easy access to calm waters for sailing, crabbing, fishing and swimming. An 800-foot railway carried guests from the sound-side hotel to and from the beach.(1) According to John Lautzenheiser, manager of the Sea Foam Motel in Nags Head, which opened more than a century later, “For the longest time, there really was no ‘Outer Banks’ – visitors back then just called the whole place Nags Head.”įollowing the Civil War and before the Wright Memorial Bridge was completed in 1930, boats remained the principal means of transport to and from the Outer Banks.(2) Over this time, Nags Head developed into a family resort, where it was common for wives and children to spend the summer at the beach and husbands to join the family on the weekends. The first hotel in the Outer Banks opened in the 1830s with a capacity of 200 guests and direct access to the resort community known as Nags Head. This is a story of mileposts, measured in the worn plywood of the motels and hotels along the beach road, and the memories of the generations of guests who frequented them. There’s the kind of history you read about in books, fact-based like the bricks and mortar of the historic beach hotels and motels of the Outer Banks, and there’s the kind we create ourselves over the course of a lifetime, experience-based such as walking across NC12 to get your grandkids, who are frolicking in the motel pool, an ice-cream cone. History is not only about buildings, but also what happens inside them. This story is brought to you through our news-gathering partnership with The Outer Banks Voice.
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