Oh HoJo, Where'dja Go?

I bought a stack of oversized postcards at an estate sale this past weekend.  There were 12 postcards featuring 2 different designs, both for a Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge located at 6929 South Lindbergh Blvd in South St. Louis County, Missouri.

As it turns out, it was a only a few miles from the estate sale. That's my neck of the woods, so it intrigued me as I didn't remember there ever being a Howard Johnson's there.  The postcards appear to date from the late 1950's and early 1960's, based on the car models.
On that site today is a retail shopping center with a Marshalls, J. C. Penney furniture store and Krispy Kreme.  Not a hint of HoJo anywhere, completely erased from the landscape. 




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Starting with a corner drugstore and soda fountain in 1925, Howard Deering Johnson built an empire of 1,000 restaurants and 500 Motor Lodges. Known for their orange-roofed inns, weathervane-topped cupolas and 28 flavors of ice cream, they are remembered as an icon of the golden days of cross-country travel. But just as they were peaking in the 1970's, Hojo's fell victim to the oil embargo and the resulting drop in travel. By that time they had diversified their company with other restaurants such as Red Coach Grills and The Ground Round, one of which operated a few miles down the street from this location near 5731 South Lindbergh Blvd. Sold from company to company throughout the 1980's to the 2000's, there stands only 2 Howard Johnsons restaurants today, although the hotel chain continues under the umbrella of a corporate conglomerate that operates other familar chains such as Super 8, Travelodge and Knights Inn.