You know the scene: Don Draper is at his desk, on the phone with Betty, and he tells her—in what is usually a lie—that he’s working late, so will be staying at a hotel for the night. Now most women in 2010, upon hearing this from their handsome and powerful husbands one too many times, would probably be suspicious, yet first-season Betty never blinks a perfect eyelash. Her mind doesn’t jump to suspect that a bohemian brunette might be Don’s actual “hotel.” She believes that Don has purchased a room for the night, and it isn’t because Sterling Cooper employees have such nifty expense accounts. It is because in the world of “Mad Men,” hotels were integrated into the lives of the wealthy in ways we don’t experience today.

Sex, Wealth, and Room Keys

The sterile, temporary space that we have come to associate with hotels did not hold true in early 1960s New York.  From the nineteenth century on, upscale New York hotels were social hot spots that captured the erratic pulse of downtown life in the most vital city in the world. They were the places to see and be seen: to showcase your jewels, your penchant for ordering the most expensive wines, and of course, your bejeweled, intoxicating mistresses.
Instead of being frequented most often by tourists, as hotels are now, the luxury downtown hotels of New York saw clientele that to a great extent consisted of wealthy New Yorkers. The social scene in luxury hotel lobbies and restaurants was intrinsic to the fabric of high society life. (And by the way, also unlike today, those were among the best restaurants in the city.)

Hotels of such opulence, at that time, were a quintessentially American phenomenon. Palatial hotels with impeccable amenities developed in the US, in part due to early twentieth century hotel entrepreneur Ellsworth Statler’s passion for delivering good service (and room keys).  Set in a bastion of capitalism, i.e., an ad agency, “Mad Men” is such an iconically American show—and that’s even before you factor in how pansy the British characters are when they make an appearance—that perhaps it’s appropriate that some of the most important plot lines revolve around this most American of institutions.

Maybe it’s also appropriate, in that case, that the only character big enough to truly crush Don Draper is the hotel emperor Conrad Hilton himself. “When I say I want the moon, I expect the moon,” Hilton elucidates, and means it. And Don, a titan in the world of advertising, discovers that such a distinction makes him no more than a pygmy beneath the ice-cold gaze of big money.

Probably the best example of an important plot line that takes place in a hotel is when the newly formed company of Sterling Cooper Draper Price takes up residency in Roger Sterling’s suite. Though wait a minute—what is he doing there, anyway?

Marriage with Benefits: Hotels and the Upper Class Male

Throughout the show, Roger Sterling has his own hotel suite. It lasts him through two marriages, his affair with Joan Holloway, and one can only imagine how many small-time conquests (such as: slim secretaries, desperate models). Yet we never see either of his wives demanding that Roger turn in his Room Keys of Sin. On the contrary, just this season we saw Roger’s wife mushily doting on him, clearly without  a clue that he’s up to his usual philandering ways. This is partly because she’s a bit of an idiot, but not entirely.
Roger has a suite of his own, year after year, because he is Roger Sterling—a man who in high society New York makes even Don Draper look like small potatoes. Sure, Don is infinitely more dashing (though Roger has the best lines), but let’s not forget that Roger is the long-time company executive. And in the era in which “Mad Men” is set, it was socially accepted that very rich and powerful men had residency in luxury hotel suites for years at a time. There were even very wealthy men who lived exclusively in hotel suites for decades, without owning permanent residences elsewhere. The advantages included convenient access to downtown high society life, servants who didn’t need to be supervised, and some of the best restaurant food in the world.

Mad Men Stars: They’re Just Like Us

But some aspects of hotels were the same in the “Mad Men” era as they are now: they were often a place to kindle—or rekindle—a romance.
Don and Betty make a go of it twice: in the first season, they have what should win the award for being the saddest anniversary outing in the world…unless the word is “desperate.” They end the evening staring at the ceiling, Betty smoking a cigarette (Freudian symbolism?), both pointedly not taking advantage of the hotel bed and Betty’s special anniversary lingerie.

This is a marked contrast to their later trip to Rome, when it seems as if there might be hope for the marriage after all. This is helped out by the splendor of the Hilton hotel in Rome, but also, perhaps, because Betty makes a game of pretending to be someone else—and as we know, Don is only attracted to women not his wife. Yet let’s not forget that hotel romances of this sort were a luxury. Earlier this season, when Peggy wants to take her relationship with her rather soggy boyfriend to the next level, she has to caution him against making too much noise—because her roommate might wake up! What a comedown after her tumultuous fling with Duck, who gave her “a go-around like [she’d] never had” in the comfort of a swank hotel room.

Considering where the relationship ends up going with Mr. Soggy, she probably thought so, too.

The Road to Nowhere

An entirely different sort of hotel—the motor inn, or the soulless conference hotel—occasionally sets the stage for some of the most critical scenes of the show. This sort of hotel is the polar opposite of the luxury downtown hotel: rather than being an integral part of high society, the motor inn or conference hotel is in a cultural no-man’s-land, alternately taking the form of escape or alienation.
It is a predominant theme in American art that some of the most pivotal discoveries in a person’s life must occur on the frontier, outside civilization. Don escapes to the road when his invented life seems unbearably thin, and in one twist, is savagely robbed by runaways in a shabby motel room. If the motel is a frontier outside the boundaries of society, then it only makes sense that the great ad man Don Draper is vulnerable only there to the predations of senseless young people. On his turf in New York, they would have got the icy stare and been shown the door.
It is in a conference hotel, that twilight zone of work away from work—that Don discovers Sal’s secret sexual preference. On the road, masks come off. (And other things, too.)

Yet no matter where Don may go on the road seeking a purpose to his existence, every motel is the same. There is no escape, because the setting—that is, Don Draper himself—never changes. Or as Don puts it, “I keep going to a lot of places and ending up somewhere I’ve already been.”