The Belvedere Cafe and Motel on 817 Old Route 66 in Litchfield, Ill., was named to the National Register of Historic Places on March 2.
The Belvedere is better-known as the former home of the Route 66 Cafe before it moved down the street a few years ago. Last I heard, the restaurant building was vacant.
Here’s a summary of the property’s history from “Along Route 66” by Quinta Scott:
Lester and Edith Kranich owned the Belvedere, built in the years following the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The cafe was of the same ochre-tweed brick as the Ariston (Cafe) and in a style that was somewhere between Streamline Moderne and Spanish Colonial. By contrast, the motel was a plain white clapboard building housing a series of attached units, unusual in an era when motel owners generally built individual cabins.