Missouri panel recommends Boots Court motel to National Register of Historic Places

The Missouri Advisory Council on Historic Preservation on Friday approved the Boots Court motel in Carthage for recommendation to the National Register of Historic Places.

The council also recommended the East Town Historic District along an older alignment in Joplin, reported the Joplin Globe.

Both recommendations all but assure they will be on the National Register in a matter of weeks.

About the motel:

The nomination cities Robert Craig, of the Society for Commercial Archeology, who states, “Streamlined Moderne was the architecture of the automobile … (and) reflected an increasingly mobile society. Roadside buildings borrowed the language of auto design, echoing the aerodynamic shapes. Streamlined Moderne architecture’s machine-inspired, character-defining features include rounded corners, parallel lines, neon decoration, clean surfaces and flat roofs with parapets.

“Boots Court,” according to the nomination, is an “iconic Streamlined Moderne motor court … (and) a unique and important landmark on Route 66 in Missouri.”

In a story by OzarksFirst.com last week, Danny Lambeth of the Carthage-based Boots Court Foundation that owns the property said a few rooms might be open to overnight guests in August, but the majority of the rooms are expected to be done in six to eight weeks.

Lambeth said the profits from the motel will go to maintaining the property and funding other historical Carthage landmarks such as the long-closed Boots Drive-In restaurant across the road. Boots Court creator Arthur Boots built the restaurant in 1946. At last report, it housed a credit union.

East Town is Joplin’s oldest platted neighborhood and business district and was notable in being racially integrated within a region that long was notorious for segregation.

One of the Route 66 alignments is Langston Hughes-Broadway. Hughes, a prominent African-American writer, was born in Joplin.

(Image of the Boots Court motel in Carthage, Missouri, in 2018 by Adam Jones via Flickr)

One thought on “Missouri panel recommends Boots Court motel to National Register of Historic Places

  1. The architectural style should be “Streamline Moderne” – there is no “Streamlined Moderne” in any reliable source. The error is in the original Joplin Globe piece, repeatedly, but a web search for “streamlined moderne” otherwise comes up empty.

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