Motor Hotel - $150.00
Iconic signs - Atlanta, GA
Limited run of 10 each. (Available)
16x20 frame, 11x14 mat
Atlanta’s Ponce de Leon Avenue has seen decades of change, but one landmark that refuses to fade into the background is the glowing sign of the Clermont Motor Hotel. First lit in 1924, the building began as the elegant Bonaventure Arms Apartments before transforming into the Clermont Motor Hotel in the late 1940s. By the mid-20th century, the neon sign had become a beacon for travelers passing through Atlanta, a symbol of Southern hospitality mixed with the grit of an evolving city.
For years, the hotel’s reputation was as colorful as its sign. The rooms grew tired, the building fell into decline, and yet the sign never stopped glowing, casting its warm neon across Ponce. Down below, in the basement, the Clermont Lounge, Atlanta’s most infamous and enduring strip club became a countercultural institution, visited by celebrities, musicians, and locals who embraced its unpolished authenticity.
By the early 2000s, the hotel itself was shuttered, but the sign remained, weathered, flickering, but unbowed. Preservationists fought to keep it standing, recognizing it as a piece of Atlanta’s visual identity. When the Clermont Hotel was finally restored and reopened in 2018, the original motor hotel sign was fully restored as well, not replaced, but carefully preserved, honoring the decades it had survived.
For me, capturing this sign was about more than photographing neon, it was about freezing a piece of Atlanta’s character, one that bridges glamour and grit, nostalgia and resilience. The Clermont sign doesn’t just advertise a hotel; it tells the story of a city that embraces its contradictions and refuses to erase its past.
