Encino's Vintage 'No-Tell' Motels

Back when I first moved to Encino in May of 1963, I remember seeing the old-fashioned motor lodge, the Encino Oaks, near the corner of Louise Avenue. It was across the street from the giant oak tree, also gone now, on the south side of Louise in the middle of the street. 

The Encino Oaks Motel was seen on several Highway Patrol TV shows, where criminals that would hide out and eventually be brought to justice with the "Do Not Disturb" signs still on their doors. My buddies and I would ride our Schwinn Sting Ray bikes through this motor court in the mid-1960s and it looked very much the same until it was torn down in the early '70s.

Still there after all these years is the covert location of the motor court motel (now functioning as apartments), tucked behind the restaurant near Encino Avenue and Ventura Boulevard. A true relic of another era. The Mar-Tex pet shop and (still there!) were in front, facing Ventura Boulevard and obscuring the motor court from street view.

Encino resident and pop historian Bob Kiek points out that "longtime Encino resident actor Clark Gable was known for [allegedly] having many of his afternoon rendez-vous in the hallowed halls of the Encino Oaks Motel and also the former Encino Inn, now functioning as the charming with its Japanese themed motif."

Kiek points out that many of these motor lodges catered to travelers driving up and down the California coast to and from Santa Barbara, Carmel, Ventura County, and as far north as San Francisco.

"These motels allowed you to drive up to your room and many of them had kitchenettes for extended visits, or added privacy," Kiek said.

I recall the soda vending machine at the Encino Oaks Motor Lodge from which I would purchase bottles of Squirt and Orange Crush in the scorching hot summers of my youth. We would ride past the Encino Oaks en route to Thrifty drug near Newcastle Avenue, where we would buy baseball cards, squirt guns, and that 5 cent ice cream.

The Encino Inn and the motor court by the car wash, formerly named Ven-Cino Car Wash still stand, and the memories of much simpler times are intact by glancing at their antiquated, quaint architecture.

We have moved past the motor court generation to high-rise hotel buildings like the Courtyard Inn in Encino, which was formerly the Howard Johnson's hotel in the 1960s, but that's another Encino Patch story.