Coral Court Model
Overview:
For a graduate level digital history course, I applied my thesis topic of collective memory and Route 66 to each of the projects assigned. The modeling assignment focused on 3D printing, and I chose to model the iconic sign for the Coral Court Motel—a beloved Route 66 landmark that was demolished in spite of an intense and emotional campaign to preserve it.
Methods:
For this project, I used the platform Tinkercad to model the motel's sign. Like many lost Route 66 sites, scans and exact measurements are not readily available, so the accuracy of my model is questionable, as measurements were estimated based on photographs. Tinkercad was relatively easy to use, though I struggled to recreate some of the sign's abnormal shapes (you can see the messy clumps of triangles along the sign’s sloping edges) and the lack of font options for text was discouraging. Fortunately, the fonts on the original Coral Court sign were remarkably similar to two of the three provided options. If they hadn’t been and I had more time, I could have shaped each individual letter in Tinkercad.
Conclusions:
3D modeling and/or printing might be useful in the study of places like Coral Court for two main reasons:
Aside from a single unit that was salvaged and is now on display at the Museum of Transportation in Missouri, the motel no longer exists. There is no way to experience the historical immediacy of an in-person visit. If someone were to want to gain some visual understanding of Coral Court, they would need a recreation.
Often, preservation efforts come from a place of nostalgic longing for the past and are not conducive to the practical concerns of modernity. This can be seen along Route 66, where roadside businesses are no longer lucrative due to the traffic that once supplied a steady stream of travelers having been diverted to bigger, faster interstates. With neither the demand nor the resources necessary to maintain the sites dear to many hearts, it’s not feasible to preserve a lot of them. 3D printing offers a salve for that nostalgic longing that, done properly, would create a more direct experience than a photograph or a souvenir.
Even though I have an official looking list of two reasons that 3D printing might be an effective tool in this context, I do not endorse this medium for these purposes. I don’t think a researcher could gain an understanding of Coral Court from a plastic model that they couldn’t get from photographs or other extant sources. Likewise, those who fight so fervently to prevent the destruction of Route 66 landmarks would not be appeased by a plastic reproduction.