An experimental digital history archive that is an attempt at documenting the
transformation and history of Northern Virginia in the past fifty years. This latest version has been created
and designed by Charlie Evans.
The Key Motel was located at 6022 Duke Street at the Shirley Highway interchange with Route 236. Brothers Lewis S. and Jerome W. Keyes owned the motel, as well as a neon sign company that very likely produced the motel’s notable sign.
In 1953, F.D. Patton obtained a building permit to erect a new motel on King Street just west of Shirley Highway, then known as Route 350. The following year, the newly opened Patton’s Town House Motel promoted its “modern” and “spacious”…