Downtown Franklin’s Last Motel

Before I-65, it was Highway 31, connecting Chicago all the way down to Mobile, Alabama.

It was the road ridden by families on vacation in wood-paneled station wagons, or travelling salesmen in plaid suits and shark-fin oldsmobiles, both 1950’s teal green. And it was the road that brought travelers through the humming little southern heart of Franklin.

They made Franklin their waystation on the road to swim-suited summers and hot dog weekends, or their bedroom on the road with their wares days and states from home.

“After Highway 31 was built in 1929, all the traffic going north and south went right through Franklin,” Rick Warwick, historian for the Heritage Foundation of downtown Franklin and Williamson County, said. “It was just like an interstate.”

Where did they lay their heads? The Franklin Motor Lodge, later known as The Franklin Motel.

Nowadays Franklin, the top tourist stop in Williamson County, has become a destination. Though there are no hotels now in downtown, there soon will be.

Back in the day, there always had been.

Jeremiah Shea built a brick house on East Main Street in 1879, and operated a store next door. Called Shea’s Grocery, it eventually became Landmark Booksellers. Shea’s actual house became the motel, appropriately called The Shea House.photo (31)

Vera and Gerald Smithson bought The Shea House and its land in 1950. After two years of planning and building, they opened the motel for business.

It opened under the moniker of The Franklin Motor Lodge, named in the futuristic, now campy style of the 1950s- the era of Automats, Space Cafes and huge hunks of metal and motor done up like lunar landers.

Dotson’s Diner, recently closed, was where they would eat. It was within walking distance then, right next door actually- from 1954 to 1978 Dotson’s was where Landmark Booksellers is now. If they wanted something a little more bracing, between Main Street and Highway 31, fate provided plenty of places for suds and set-ups.

“There were a couple liquor stores, and a few beer joins along Main Street and the Square,” said Warwick. “Then you go on out towards the Globe and the Log Cabin down Highway 31.”

He refers, of course to the infamous honky tonks that dotted Franklin Road north of downtown.

But after a brief heyday, the motel closed in 1979, after less than 30 years, spanning that golden age of innocence and never-far fear of the cold war that turned into tumult with the culture of love and turned into nihlism, downers and dicso.

But disco does not bear the blame- though it feels good to blame things on disco. Interstate 65 does.

“65 came in, really, in the late ’60s and Highway 31 was no longer a major route for travelers,” said Warwick. “So business died down.”

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