The Envoy and the Diplomat

We're taking a break from London today, and traveling both in time and space back to Washington, D.C., in the late 1970s and early '80s.

In those years, after I was about 11 years old, my mom, brother and I would travel from our home in Florida to Washington twice a year, to visit my grandmother, who lived in suburban Maryland. We had to drive through D.C. to get there, and we often took a route along New York Avenue to Bladensburg Road, in the northeastern quadrant of the city.

On New York Avenue we passed two motels -- the Envoy and the Diplomat. I remember them as clear as a bell. That's the Diplomat, above, on an old postcard. (All pictures borrowed from the Internet, obviously!)

And here's the Envoy, surrounded by acres of grass and parkland and visibly backing up to both the Capitol and the Washington Monument -- which is nothing like its appearance in real life. It actually looked like this:

The Envoy's sign was blue neon, as I recall, in stylish cursive lettering that lit up the vertical concrete slab atop the roof. I don't have an image of the Diplomat's sign, but in my possibly inaccurate memory it had red lettering on a sort of shield, something like the logo on its brochure:

I never stayed in either of these places, and in fact, by the time we drove past them they'd seen better days. A Washington Post article from 1977 describes the Diplomat as a hotbed of crime, and I suspect the Envoy was no better. Northeast Washington could be dicey back then.

I always liked seeing them, though. It meant we were just a few miles from my grandmother's house, and I loved their '50s neon charm.

Here's an image of the Envoy that I believe was taken from an old matchbook. If it looked that cool, you'd stay there, right?

Unfortunately, by 2009 the Envoy had been stripped of almost all its character. It had been boiled down to a bland paste bearing the Quality Inn brand.

And now it's gone altogether, as is, I believe, the Diplomat. (I couldn't even find images of it on Google Street View, unless I'm confused about its location and/or it's completely unrecognizable.)

So, as I think about Christmases past, I can't help but recall these two seedy but swank Mid-Century motels, and the way I always watched for them and their bright, colorful signs on our long car trips north.