In its heyday, there were plenty of stops on Route 66 if you were looking for family fun.

But taking the road through St.

Louis, there was an infamous place to go if you were up to no good.

Any reason you might have to need a room for a couple hours, the No-tell Motel of the Coral Court was the perfect place for you.

That's Andrew Wonko, a public historian at the Missouri Historical Society.

By the time the Coral Court was demolished in 1995, it was associated with the mafia, prostitution, outrageous parties, and even a murder.

But the motel began with good intentions.

It was just one of many motels built on what was known as Motel Row.

So Watson's Motel Row roughly stretched between the St.

Louis City limits and Lindbergh Boulevard.

And across that area, you had more than a dozen of these motels that popped up.

Most of them were built from the 1930s to 50s.

And a few still stand today, like the Wayside and Chippewa motels.

These were the first roadside accommodations for folks who wanted something that wasn't one of the big grand hotels of downtown, something a little more family-friendly that they could get in and out of, something with a playground and a swimming pool for their kids.

The Coral Court was built in 1941 by John Carr.

He wanted the motel to stand out from the others on Watson Road.

He spent hours with local architect Adolph Strubeck coming up with plans for what this motel would look like.

And he wanted to capture that feeling of roadside aerodynamics, the sort of built for speed curves.

He went with this glazed sort of honey colored tile.

In the early days, the Coral Court was a huge success.

By 1946, John Carr has tripled its size.

He has 70 units.

He has a swimming pool, a playground, anything a family who is wanting to come through could want.

While the Coral Court has been demolished for over 30 years, an entire unit of the motel was salvaged and is currently on display at the National Museum of Transportation in Des Peres.

-Kobe Ellison, the museum curator, explains that the motel also had private garages.

-You could park your car in at night, which in the early days was considered to be, you know, a luxury.

And then as the history continued on through the '60s, when the motel kind of started to develop a seedy factor, it kind of led itself for other things.

- But even before it became known as seedy, the motel made headlines for housing a murderer.

The story begins in Kansas City.

In 1953, a couple named Carl Hall and Bonnie Hedy kidnapped six-year-old Bobby Greenlease.

- His father was a very well-known car dealer, a multimillionaire, had dealerships throughout the Midwest region and they asked for a ransom of $600,000.

And ultimately, they killed the boy before they received the ransom.

The two buried the boy's body in St.

Joseph, Missouri and fled to St.

Louis.

While here, Carl went to stay at the Coral Court for a time, where he was finally caught.

Eventually, both Hall and Hedy confessed to the crimes and were sentenced to death.

Ellison says the Greenlees case affected the motel's reputation.

Coral Court was still kind of its heyday, you know, I mean, it was still a reputable place to stay.

But you know, when something like that happens, and just the grizzliness of the crime, you know, killing a kid, I think that that really affected the relationship and the reputation of the motel.

But the biggest reason for the Coral Court's decline was the passage of the Interstate Highway System in 1956.

For places like the Coral Court, all of those families who used to go right by the doorstep were now flying by on Interstate 44 just a mile away.

The Coral Court began to cater to more local clientele.

They reduced rates.

They started offering rooms to be rented by the hour.

You could buy what was called a short, which was four hours or less for like 20 bucks.

A bunch of high school students would pool their money and they would rent a room for the night and they'd have big parties.

By then, that's when that reputation really started to kind of make the motel was known for that.

People used to joke that it was sinning in style when you would go to the Coral Court because it did have that style to it, but it was also some of the architectural features of the place.

You had this wonderful canopy of trees that was sort of, and the units were sort of pushed back from the road's edge so you could get back into this complex and nobody could see what you were doing.

You had these built-in garages, the glass block windows that were all the rage in the 1940s were perfect for sort of shielding prying eyes.

As the Coral Court's reputation became increasingly tied to stories of crime, prostitution, and other illicit activities, the motel continued to decline.

After founder John Carr died in 1983, his wife struggled to keep the business afloat, especially as developers tried to buy the property.

But by then, the motel had become a beloved local landmark, inspiring preservationists to fight for its survival.

In 1987, the Coral Court Preservation Society was formed with an attempt to try to keep this landmark.

Local historian Esli Hamilton actually got it listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But the clock was ticking.

And by the early 1990s, a plan had come forth to repurpose the land into a suburban housing development.

In 1995, the Coral Court was demolished, but parts of the motel were preserved.

A group of county employees and museum volunteers, they took it upon themselves with guidance to save two of the units, actually one unit with the two sets of rooms.

They worked eight 10-hour days for about a little over two weeks, and fortunately, with their determination and insight, they were able to rebuild the unit that we have here.

While most of Motel Row has disappeared, the enduring fascination with the Coral Court reflects a broader desire to preserve the places and stories that once defined Route 66.

Had the Coral Court held on and actually been saved across that time, it would easily be one of the most visited landmarks in St.

Louis.

Not just Route 66 landmarks, but any sort of landmark in the city.

And would have been a huge point of pride for the city's Route 66 history that we have this storied and fascinating motel.