Wildwood Doo Wop.com

A great example of Doo Wop design, this motel was torn down in 2006. The oceanfront lot still sits empty.

psf11:

I probably have to attribute a lot of my feelings about the Cavalier to nostalgia. My family probably started staying there when I was six or so. But what was wonderful and unique about the Cavalier was how it froze still in time. I don't mean that it was run down in any way. In fact, as motels go, especially in the Wildwoods, it was immaculate. But somehow the atmosphere surrounding it was exactly the same when I was in my late thirties as it was when I was six. It was like a perfectly preserved time capsule that allowed me to travel back to my youth once a year or so. From the little shuffleboard court in front of the office, to the way the afternoon sun shadowed the pool, to the way the morning sun lit the little coffee shop, it was almost dreamlike in the way it captured moments of long gone vacations. The sense was so profound that the motel itself became the main destination of our later trips to the Crest. The time I stood there, as the sun set, as a small child with my grandparents, exhausted from a three hour drive, looked almost exactly as it did when I stood there as a man approaching 40, pointing out memories to my wife. It was timeless. Even the little "50's" stylized cartoon fish still stared up at me from the custom printed paper bath mats in every bathroom... that is... until two years ago.?

They came quietly in the winter and demolished one of the last places on Earth where it was possible to step back in time. I recently stood in the empty field on Toledo where it stood to collect a few pieces of tile and brick as souvenirs. That's all that remains. All the atmosphere and time travel power must have been hauled out with the broken concrete. The past is gone. Goodbye my old friend.