Tiki Oasis, La Salle, IL (other)

Name:Tiki Oasis
Type:other
Street:I 80 & US 51
City:La Salle
State:IL
Zip:
country:USA
Phone:
Status:defunct

Description:

No deference to Otto here, but it looks like Tiki Oasis actually started in the late 60's in La Salle, Illinois! A one-stop shop that included everything for the Tiki traveler - gas, auto service, food, and lodging. Where the customer was the king.

Just look for the giant torches in the sky!

Oh, and did I tell you? There was a Tiki Smorgasbord!

Now that's funny!

DC

What an oasis of Polynesian splendor! :D

That's more accurately in Peru. Been there and I have no idea why it is called Tiki...

Yes, still operational last time I was through there. It's even referenced with photo in Tiki Road Trip.

TT

I read online that the complex was for sale a few years ago, but I guess it is still operational as the Tiki Inn. Here is a current pic of the hotel and the sign.

Still nothing Tiki in La Salle.

DC

But DC, this style is a predecessor to Tiki architecture, called "Storybook Style". Here are the "Seven Dwarfs Apartments" in my neighborhood:

Instead of Polynesia, this theme was trying to evoke an Old World charm... :D

(Disclaimer: While this architectural genre does exist, the TIKI INN is certainly not an actual example of it)

It looks like they were shooting for a commercial building interpretation of traditional Tudor Style.

The apartments Sven posted look like a very stylized and fanciful interpretation of Tudor Style within the Storybook Style.

Other examples of buildings that fit into the Storybook Style can be seen in the Continental Village section (Selma side) of the Crossroads Of The World shopping center in Hollywood, CA, and of course one of my personal favorites...

The Administrative Office of the Willat Studios, pictured here circa 1920...

The structure was later moved from Culver City to 516 N. Walden Drive in Beverly Hills, CA. Re-purposed as a private residence it soon became commonly referred to as the "Witch's House" for obvious reasons.

None of which is Tiki, but those steep high peaked roof lines sure do have possibilities.

Bear

Thank You BB for posting THE quintessential example of Storybook architecture. Crossroads of the World houses the TASCHEN offices (among others). Yeah, Tudor is all straight and stately, but when the beams grow crooked and irregular shingled roofs turn swooping it becomes fairy tale land. A close-up of the same complex:

I see the connection between Storybook style and Polynesian pop in the fact that both were created with the help of Hollywood set design know-how. And they both were a reaction to modernism, a form of organic anti-modernism. Here's the living room of a 1920s home in the Silverlake hills, with its original lamp:

There is a Tiki gas station, which is the "Tiki Oasis" here and the TIki Inn, which I stayed at with BK. Don't recommend it. TOo bad the Aku Tiki Room closed. We had a helluva event planned for that place.

I wonder if it has any relationship to this truck stop, a couple hundred miles away on I-94 in Michigan...

TT

Ah, I miss the old tiki sign on I-80.

In the 1990s I used to drive by there twice a year or so, and one day it was just gone, replaced by that awful new one.

I first reconnoitered the interior of the inn and gas station around 1995, and there was no tiki to be found even back then - just the sign.

I first explored the Te-khi in Michigan about a decade ago, and found nothing of interest at all.

But that isn't to say that, in the distant past, both places didn't have the same ownership and some tiki to speak of.