If you have a few minutes, read this long feature in the Washington Missourian about L.B. Eckelkamp Jr., the longtime owner of the Diamond Inn Motel in Villa Ridge, Missouri.
The Diamond Inn, which turned 50 years old not long ago, probably will be torn down by the time you read this. Ultimately, the motel, along with the adjoining Diamonds Restaurant and the nearby Gardenway Motel, were doomed by the bypass of Route 66 by Interstate 44.
Belying his sadness, Eckelkamp will tell you he checks in on the demolition progress to “make sure everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to be doing.” That line draws laughter, but it masks a deeper emotion.
Eckelkamp is reliving a lifetime of emotions and memories as he watches the demolition crews do their work. There is a lot of history to recall. There are a lot of stories to tell. The buildings he is watching come down represent the last physical remnants of the Diamonds legacy, a legacy which shaped Eckelkamp’s life as well as the lives of his family members and everyone who worked or ate there. The Diamonds had a lasting influence on a lot of people.
The origins of the Diamonds restaurants and motel go back before Route 66 — to 1919, when farmer Spencer Groff saw a lot of cars go by his property. He built a roadside stand to sell his plums. Those sold out, so he began offering soda, hot dogs, eggs, tobacco and puppies and added a gas pump.
The business kept growing, so Groff sketched out a diamond-shaped building between Highway 100 and Route 66 and called it The Diamonds.
That brings us to Eckelkamp’s father, Louie Sr., who began working for Groff in the 1920s as a busboy and became the sole owner of the restaurant by 1935.
The building he rebuilt still stands in run-down condition at the intersection of Old Route 66 and Route 100. It was there that L.B. Eckelkamp Jr., like so many other area teens, began working as a busboy and dishwasher at the age of 12 or 13. It was the mid-1950s, and the restaurant was already riding a wave of success that wouldn’t stop for another 40 years.
Eckelkamp says he worked 12-hour shifts in the restaurant, six days a week. “It taught us how to work,” he says, speaking not just for himself. “Everybody who is anybody in Washington worked at the Diamonds.”
The restaurant was so busy that no employees were allowed to take Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights off. “Everybody worked on the weekends,” he says. His wife Bonnie, sister Susie Eckelkamp and cousin Mark Wood who were interviewed for this story, nod and chuckle in agreement. They were all there, too, as was Eckelkamp’s other sister, Judy and his brother, Billy.
How busy was busy? “We had buses,” said Eckelkamp. “Seventy-plus buses a day stopped for meal stops. Think about that. Thirty to 35 people on a bus that would get off and have a meal, 70 times a day.” And that was on top of the regular car traffic.
Business suddenly dried up when I-44 opened in 1967. The Eckelkamps built a new motel and restaurant at the interstate’s offramps, and their business began to thrive again.
Revenue began to slowly ebb away. The second restaurant closed in 1995, and the motel followed in 2016. The Gardenway Motel closed in 2014.
The Eckelkamps haven’t departed the hotel business entirely. They own the Holiday Inn St. Louis West at Six Flags in nearby Eureka, Missouri. But the Diamonds empire is no more.
(Vintage postcard image of Diamond Inn Motel and Diamonds Restaurant in Villa Ridge, Missouri, via 66Postards.com)
Hey Ron (or anyone familiar with this location)…help a reader out who’s never seen this site. Looking at that post card, it “appears” the complex is right on Route 66 (to the right on the card) with the Interstate just behind it (on the left in the post card), and there’s an Interstate exit at the apex of the property (at the top of the card). If all that is true, how did 66 being de-certified in favor of the Interstate kill their business? They appear to be in an excellent position to exploit Interstate travelers, with great visibility from the highway. Just curious.
DynoDave,
Good question! I was a frequent traveler of that area during the 1950s to the 1970s, eating at both the original Villa Ridge location (second reincarnation after a fire) now boarded up and the location right off Interstate 44 now demolished. As a side note, the service at the original location was impeccable and it was one of the first airconditioned establishments on US 66.
During its nearly 60-year existence, US 66 was under constant change. As highway engineering became more sophisticated, engineers constantly sought more direct routes between cities and towns. Increased traffic led to a number of major and minor realignments of US 66 through the years, particularly in the years immediately following World War II.
During the early 1950’s Missouri started to widen US 66 from the 1930 alignment to four lanes from St Louis to the Oklahoma border. This upgrade of US 66 to four lanes, and not the interstate, was the deaths kneel for the original Diamonds at the Villa Ridge location. The new four lane US 66 alignment now bypassed the intersection of the old two lane US 66 and US 50 by about 1/2 mile which was the exact location of the original Diamonds. Fifteen to twenty years later, the federal government upgraded the new four lane alignment of US 66 to Interstate Highway status. That is when the Diamonds built its “new” location right off of Interstate 44 in with direct viewing from the highway.
Now to answer your question, what caused the new Diamonds to fail was a combination of a change in American tastes, property taxes, labor costs, and chain franchise motels and restaurants. Traveling Americans now had an expectation for amenities and services that only a named franchise establishment could provide. The increase in property taxes and business taxes pushed the “Mom and Pop” establishments farther away from the highway, but the labor rates and operating costs continued to rise. Since the small business could not pass these costs on to their customers, they had to move, sell, or close.
That is why the new Diamonds closed despite their excellent location and good service. However, they are not alone is this dilemma. Unless a roadside establishment has a large local clientele, they are all gone along the old US 66 two lane alignment (except maybe at Devils’ Elbow) and the current Interstate 44 alignment. Sadly, one who traveled the four lane US 66 alignment and some of the old two lane alignment in the early 1950s, like myself, would not recognize any of the establishments on the road today.