In its heyday, the Bell’s Motel (named after its original owners – but also called the Bells and the Bell) on Route 66 in Kingman, Arizona, was a ‘fully modern, fire-proof, air-cooled motel’. Built in 1945, it had 13 rooms and boasted that it had rooms with both cooling and heat, tiled baths, tubs and showers, ‘Beauty Rest mattresses’, television and a playground and patio. Later, as it fell on harder times, it became the Desert Lodge Apartments.

In 2012, a state-wide survey for the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office recommended that the by now boarded up Desert Lodge Apartments should be put forward for entry onto the National Register of Historic Places with ‘High Priority’, this rating means it filled one or more of the following criteria: an excellent example of its property type and strong Route 66 character; particularly rare property due to age, type of construction or architectural style; good intact properties which appear endangered due to deterioration or redevelopment and/or being sited in a high priority historic district. Even in its sad state, with its ‘giraffe’ stone façade, the motel ticked at least two of those boxes.

 In April 2015, the Californian owners announced they would be gutting the property, leaving the stonework standing and it would then be redeveloped as living accommodation. The interiors were indeed gutted and all the woodwork ripped out, and then nothing else happened. For a year, the Desert Lodge Apartments have stood, denuded and fenced off, and I’ve hoped against hope that the planned renovation would take place.

Yesterday bidding closed for the complete demolition of the Desert Lodge Apartments and the clearance of the site.

UPDATE Spring 2017: And so the demolition crew moved in. It took hours for there to be nothing left of the Bell. Now there’s one more empty lot in Kingman.