If you’re a fan of roadside architecture and vintage signage, behold this monstrosity just west of New Castle’s Raintree Hotel. Beneath all that awkward paneling and decades of modifications, guess what I think is hiding underneath: my money’s on the framework of one of Holiday Inn’s landmark Great Signs. Those towering neon beacons were icons of the American highway!Â
The Raintree Hotel sits at the corner of State Road 3 and County Road 300-South, between the heart of downtown New Castle and State Road 3’s I-70 interchange. I always suspected it started as something else since the building’s sheer size and massive sign didn’t seem to track with some random one-off motel. As it turns out, I was right: work began on New Castle’s Holiday Inn in August, 1969. The building first housed seventy-two rooms, but was designed to add twenty-eight more in the future. Initial plans also allowed for a commercial building with a hundred-seat restaurant, a seventy-person lounge, and four meeting rooms with space for fifty people each. Finally, the new Holiday Inn would feature a heated swimming pool, dog kennels, and parking for 150 cars1.Â
I assume New Castle’s Holiday Inn had one of the chain’s legendary Great Signs. After all, it featured prominently in the hotel’s advertisements during the mid-1970s2. Designed at the request of Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson, the Great Sign was impossible to miss: rising nearly fifty feet above the roadside, it combined an emerald-green panel emblazoned with glowing white neon letters, elaborate theater-inspired neon tubing and chasers, a bright yellow starburst, a blinking arrow, and a changeable marquee announcing vacancies and special events.
The result was less a sign than a roadside spectacle. Travelers could spot it from far down the highway, which made the Great Sign one of the most recognizable symbols of American travel! With Wilson’s guidance, Gene Barber and Roland Alexander of Memphis-based Balton & Sons Sign Company crafted a design that became synonymous with the Holiday Inn brand and practically defined the golden age of roadside architecture3.
Unfortunately, Kemmons Wilson departed the company he founded in the early 1980s. In 1982, Holiday Inn management decided to phase out the expensive Great Signs. Wilson disagreed with their decision, and wound up with a Great Sign engraved on his tombstone4. The company decided to modernize with cheap backlit plastic signage, and they sucked. Most of the old Great Signs were scrapped5. Maybe the cosmetics of New Castle’s were too.
New Castle’s Holiday Inn didn’t last all that long. It became known as Raintree Inn by 19836, after a 1948 novel by Ross Lockridge Jr. that took place in a fictional Henry County. Later, the novel was made into a movie starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. The hotel was called Best Western Raintree Inn by 19857. In 1994, county commissioners gave approval for an addition to the inn, which added twenty-nine guest rooms and enclosed the swimming pool8. Best Western eventually abandoned the property, which retained its Raintree Inn name until about 2019. Based on Google Street View cameras, it’s been known as the Raintree Hotel ever since.Â
I’ve spent the night in some pretty questionable motels over the years. At one in North Little Rock, I woke up to find the perfectly functional car parked beside mine sitting on cinder blocks! Another -a Travelodge near Kentucky’s New Madrid Bend- featured roaches marching across the ceiling in tow as if you’d highlighted them in Photoshop. Then there was the hot-water handle that snapped off in my hand. My standards aren’t exactly luxurious.
Even so, I don’t think I’d spend a night at the Raintree Hotel in its current condition. The property looks tired, neglected, and maybe dangerous, certainly removed from its glory days. If you’re passing through New Castle and need a room, I’d suggest continuing north to Muncie or spending a night at the Steve Alford All American Inn. It’s the one with the big shoe out front.
Still, decrepitude is what makes the Raintree Hotel’s old sign so fascinating. Hidden beneath layers of paneling, paint, and decades of alterations are what appear to be the bones of something far grander. The gaps all line up with the famous Great Sign design- that towering beacon of neon optimism that promised travelers a clean room, a good meal, and a comfortable night’s sleep just ahead. It’s a shame that the Raintree Inn doesn’t seem likely to provide that.Â
The Raintree Hotel sign stands as a relic of an era when roadside architecture wasn’t merely functional- it was theatrical. It was designed to grab your attention from half a mile away and make you excited about stopping. The old Holiday Inn may be gone, but if you look closely, one of the most recognizable symbols of twentieth-century American travel still appears to be standing watch over southern Henry County.
Sources Cited
1 New Castle Holiday Inn Work Begins (1969, August 15). The Muncie Star. p. 22.
2 Open Christmas Day! (1975, December 24). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 12.
3 Conway, M. (2026, April). The Holiday Inn Great Sign. Great Sign. Web. Retrieved June 6, 2026.
4 Lauderdale, V. (2019, August 21). The Distinctive Tombstone of Kemmons Wilson. Memphis Magazine [Memphis]. Web. Retrieved June 6, 2026.
5 (See footnote 3).
6 IES Manufacturing Now Holding Interviews (1983, May 6). The Muncie Star. p. 25.
7 Raintree Inn (1985, June 12). The Tri-County Banner [Knightstown]. p. 14.
8 Henry officials OK building plans (1994, November 22). The Muncie Star. p. 2.
My wedding reception was there on August 8, 1981!
Wow!
Depending on the accuracy of the Google reviews, the RainTree was still open as of 5-6 months ago. Recent reviews aren’t exactly glowing. Still, the building has the classic motel look of exterior room entrances and tall windows that I grew up with and still look for when traveling.
On Thanksgiving Night, 1988 I stayed at something called either Dollar Inn or Budget Inn on the south side of Indianapolis, probably near 31 or 65 since I was on my way to southern Kentucky. $29 got me a door with no deadbolt and some sketchy characters hanging out in the parking lot, so I wedged the room’s lone chair under the doorknob and slept really fitfully that night.
The exterior entrances and tall windows were what first drew me to it, along with its massive size. Back when it was the Raintree Inn not long ago, the sign was much more welcoming.
And wow! That $29 night sounds terrible! I’d have slept awfully poor too.
A nice dive into something that I think most of us notice, with a degree of sadness, in small towns on old once major roads around the country. I can almost always tell nearly instantly what one of these places was originally just by the shape of the sign and the arrangement on the property of the front office…which makes sense as these places were created to be instantly and firmly recognizable. It takes a lot more than paneling, a bad paint job and sloppy fonts to fully camouflage them.
It’s a darn shame that most of those signs were scrapped. I’d pay more than I’d pay for nearly any old car to have one, haul it back to my property, and restore it. Same goes with HoJo signs.
Thanks! Back when this place was the Raintree Inn, the sign wasn’t nearly as egregious. Here’s a Google Street View image from before I thought to take a photo of it. https://maps.app.goo.gl/6EBQZVosmJFNSVtP7
I, too, would like to own some vintage neon. Or an old courthouse clock tower.
It is sad that most of those Holiday Inn signs were lost in the name of cost. It’s nice that the Raintree HOtel may have inadvertently preserved one. But that current sign is a typographic/design nightmare! At least it does one thing well: Make me not want to stay there.
Haha yes, the sign is absolutely terrible. It wasn’t so bad a few years ago back when it was the Raintree Inn!
It is not hard to imagine how New Castle could have supported a Holiday Inn – For decades, the city could boast of a major parts manufacturing plant for Chrysler – one that went back to the very beginnings of the company. But yeah, I don’t think I would stay at the Raintree.
New Castle even named the high school after Walter P.!