Tag Archives: Mathewson’s Motor Cabins

Friday Flashback #469

Posted on September 26, 2025 | 5 comments

As the Delamar Westport claims its place as Westport’s premier — okay, only — hotel , it’s instructive to look back at earlier eras of lodging.

No, not to the Westport Inn and New Englander Motel. We’ve done that already.

We’ve also Friday Flashbacked the Westport Hotel, located smack downtown before it was demolished to become the original YMCA (now Anthropologie).

Today we remember Deri’s Tourist Camp:

According to James Gray, who sent the 1937 postcard (above), it may have been located at what is now the Westport Housing Authority’s Hidden Brook and Sasco Creek Village.

Those townhouses replaced what for decades was a trailer park.

Deri’s Tourist Camp looks a lot like Mathewson’s Tourist Cabins:

They may have pre-dated Deri’s. And their location has been described variously as the former trailer park, and just west of that, where the Delamar is now.

We doubt any “06880” readers are alive who actually stayed at Deri’s or Mathewson’s.

But if you remember them at all, click “Comments” below.

(Friday Flashback is one of “06880”‘s many regular features. If you enjoy this — or anything else on our website — please consider a tax-deductible contribution. Just click here. Thank you!)

5 Comments

Posted in Friday Flashback, Local business

Tagged Delamar Westport, Deri's Tourist Camp, Mathewson's Motor Cabins

As plans to renovate the Westport Inn move through the application process — the 116-room hotel will be downsized and upgraded to 85 rooms, with more landscaping, a 3-story addition, demolition of the front building, a pool, rear dining terrace, and driveway and parking improvements — let’s look back, to its earlier incarnations.

The New Englander Motor Hotel was perfect for the 1960s. It welcomed weary Connecticut Turnpike travelers at Exits 18 and 19. Amenities included a pool (with, for a while, “memberships” offered to Westporters).

The postcard above is an accurate rendition of the rooms facing the rear (north), and the pool.

I’m not sure what the view in the front shows, though. That’s not exactly the Post Road, and the stores on the other side.

The Westport Inn/New Englander has been a hospitable spot for a century. Long before motels, it was the site of Mathewson’s Tourist Cabins. They were all the rage when motoring was new.

The Turnpike (now called I-95) was still in the future. The drive between New York and Boston could be long; driving on the Post Road was tedious. The “motor cabins” offered a welcome respite.

Look familiar?

“Tourist cabins” eventually morphed into “motor courts,” then “motels.” A few still survive.

One is the Norwalk Westport Motel.

It’s in Norwalk; presumably “Westport” sneaks into the name because 1) it’s kind of near the border, and 2) in Norwalk, the Post Road is called “Westport Avenue.”

In 2022, the Norwalk Westport Motel has seen better days.

Some of those days can be seen in this postcard, courtesy of Carl Swanson:

I have no idea what the room rate was, back then.

But gas was probably 39 cents a gallon.

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14 Comments

Posted in Friday Flashback, Local business

Tagged Mathewson's Motor Cabins, New Englander, Westport Inn

UPDATE: Friday Flashback #38

Posted on May 5, 2017 | 14 comments

Westport has had its share of inns: The early ones, where George Washington stayed on his travels through town. The Pine Knoll and Hawthorne, which I think were more like rooming houses. The Inn at National Hall on the west bank of the Saugatuck River (whose bottom floor is soon to be the ‘Port restaurant).

Today of course, there’s the Westport Inn.

We’ve had actual hotels too, including the Westport Hotel (on the corner of the Post Road and Main Street, which in 1923 became the site of the Westport YMCA and is now Bedford Square).

But back in what appears to be the 1930s or ’40s — judging from the hard-to-see automobiles in this postcard from Jack Whittle’s collection — we also had Mathewson’s Motor Cabins.

Click on or hover over to enlarge.

According to the postcard, they were located on the Boston Post Road/Route 1.

Motor cabins — also called “motor courts” — sprouted in the 1920s and ’30s, when Americans took to the roads in cars. They were a step up from rudimentary “tourist camps.”

According to Wikipedia, the price of motor courts was higher. But the cabins had electricity, indoor bathrooms, and occasionally a private garage or carport. They were arranged in attractive clusters or a U-shape.

Does anyone remember Mathewson’s Motor Cabins? Where exactly were they? Who stopped there? Did they have any impact on Westport?

Click “Comments” below, to fill us in on this lost era of town history.

UPDATE: Thanks to alert reader Tom Leyden, we’ve got an aerial photo from 1951. It shows Mathewson’s Motor Cabins right where the Westport Inn is today (as noted in the “Comments”) section). Check it out:

Mathewson's Motor Court - aerial photo - 1951