How the Heart-Shaped Hot Tub Put the Poconos on the Map for Romantic Getaways
The single click of a camera shutter changed everything for the man who invented an iconic piece of honeymoon kitsch.
When George Silk unfolded his tripod one afternoon in 1971, the Life photojournalist did so in a decidedly different environment than he had found himself in for previous assignments. Instead of ducking for cover in the jungles of Vietnam, Silver was at a honeymoon resort in a mountainous region of northeast Pennsylvania trying to overcome another logistical conundrum: How does one photograph a couple in a heart-shaped hot tub without being seen in the wall of mirrors behind it? He decided to leave the camera on the tripod and ask one of the models to fire the shutter using a hand-held remote control.
The resulting photograph ran as part of a two-page magazine spread highlighting the growing popularity of the Poconos as a romantic getaway for honeymooners. In this case, the focal point was Cove Haven, one of the resorts that pioneered a simple but impactful invention: the heart-shaped hot tub. For Morris B. Wilkins, the Cove Haven co-owner who came up with that idea a few years earlier, the click of the journalist’s camera shutter changed everything.
"Business went crazy after that,” says Douglas Wilkins, a nephew of the late Morris B. Wilkins, who died in 2015 at the age of 90. “Everybody wanted to stay there. That led to a substantial expansion of Cove Haven and also drove the Poconos' reputation as the honeymoon capital of the world.”
Fuel shortages and the construction of Interstate 80 further encouraged newlyweds to flock to the Poconos in the 1950s—to consummate new marriages, reignite existing ones, or just indulge in the kind of weekend away that can only be had within the private confines of mirror-covered walls and ceilings. According to Douglas Wilkins, the entire sexy honeymoon suite aesthetic was his uncle's idea, too.
"Suspending mirrors on the ceiling, from an engineering perspective, was not easy in 1963," he says. "You had to use special glues. He was the first to do that."
While the region has since been eclipsed by other, perhaps more exotic locales as a honeymoon destination, the Poconos has nonetheless clung to its long-held cred. As visitors drove toward the check-in desk of Pocono Palace—another three-star hotel on the aptly named Fantasy Road, which closed in 2024—they would see a giant heart-shaped sign declaring it "the land of love.” The region's reputation as a romantic getaway is currently being hyped by influencers, but it’s really thanks to Wilkins's entrepreneurial and aesthetic instincts that those people even know it exists.
Like the journalist who would make his resort famous, Morris B. Wilkins was no stranger to war.
During World War II, he worked as an electrician aboard a US Navy submarine in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, wondering at times if he would ever return home to the scenic mountains of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. It was there, coincidentally, that servicemen lucky enough to get a break from the battlefield would increasingly venture with their sweethearts for an all-too-rare weekend alone together.
After the war, Wilkins set up shop working as an electrician in the Poconos. His business was destroyed by Hurricane Diane in 1955, but three years later, according to family legend, he was working with a carpenter friend named Harold "Obie" O'Brien to renovate a local hotel. The pair started riffing on how they could create a much more dynamic and memorable experience for guests if they owned a hotel of their own. So they bought one.
By the early 1960s, Wilkins and O'Brien had been operating Cove Haven Resort on Lake Wallenpaupack for a few years, working hard to expand its 18 original rooms to an eventual total of 236 and doing their best to attract as many of the couples flocking to the area as they could.
Then, Wilkins had an idea. One night in 1963 while he was relaxing at his home in the small Pennsylvania mountain town of Honesdale, the young entrepreneur was struck by an inspiration that sent him scrambling into the basement to draw a mock-up on the concrete floor. Wilkins called up O'Brien to ask his much craftier business partner if it would be possible to build a hot tub in the shape of a heart.
The duo agreed: They were onto something.
"All they had to do at that point was to figure out how they were going to get it manufactured," says Douglas Wilkins of his uncle's lightbulb moment. "On the phone over the next couple of days and in person at the hotel, they talked about how they were going to set it, what it was going to look like, how they were going to plumb it, all that stuff."
Wilkins, never one to shy away from experimentation, poured the concrete of the first heart-shaped hot tub prototype himself. Before they knew it, Wilkins and O'Brien had a working tub installed in one of the rooms at Cove Haven. By all accounts, the guests loved it, so the two men manufactured more.
The advent of the heart-shaped tub was well-timed. As the post-war marriage boom turned into the era of free love, the Poconos became synonymous with honeymoons and sultry weekend getaways. Cove Haven, with a heart-shaped tub now in each of its rooms, was well-positioned to promote the area's reputation for romance and capitalize on the results. In 1969, Caesars Resorts acquired Cove Haven, made Wilkins the president of its newly-formed Poconos Resorts division, and expanded its footprint in the region through the acquisition of two more resorts: Pocono Palace and Paradise Stream. As the honeymoon business boomed throughout the area in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the heart-shaped tub became an increasingly iconic fixture in the honeymoon suites—not just at Cove Haven and its two sister resorts, but throughout the Poconos and beyond. Eventually, Morris's invention transcended the boundaries of its birthplace and became a universal symbol of romance—a trope, even.
The proliferation of Morris's invention was largely due to the fact that he failed to patent it. While some might view this as a strategic misstep, Douglas Wilkins insists that his uncle was happy to see his idea spread and was always busy focusing on what was next for his own resorts and the customers who visited them. “Morris was just a visionary," Wilkins says. "We would have Thanksgiving dinner as a family and you could tell he was thinking of the next thing. He was Steve Jobs on a shoestring budget."
In 1983, that “next thing” for couples visiting the Poconos took on a somewhat unexpected shape: A seven-foot-tall acrylic replica of a Champagne glass that doubled as a Jacuzzi designed to accommodate two adults. And unlike the heart-shaped hot tub before it—or the heart-shaped swimming pool that later started appearing in some of the resort's rooms—Wilkins did manage to acquire a patent for that one.
But much like many of the marriages it helped consumate, the ubiquitous charm of the heart-shaped tub wouldn't last forever. By the early 1990s, the honeymoon suite aesthetic began to be seen as kitschy and outdated as consumer tastes evolved and newlyweds started seeking out more modern and luxurious accommodations.
Even in the Poconos, the popularity of the classic retro romance suite aesthetic has declined since its peak in the 1980s. Until 2021, adventurous visitors to East Stroudsburg could still explore the abandoned ruins of Penn Rose Hills, a honeymoon resort that went out of business in 2009 and left an eerie graveyard of empty suites with shattered mirrors and broken heart-shaped tubs.
That isn't to say that the legacy of Morris B. Wilkins doesn't live on in the Poconos. According to his 2015 obituary in the New York Times, there were 437 heart-shaped tubs and 135 Champagne glass whirlpool-equipped tubs still in operation at Cove Haven and its two sister resorts at the time of his death. Nearly a decade later, couples still frequent the self-proclaimed "land of love" to indulge in a steamy weekend away. Musician Lucy Dacus even used the still-iconic aesthetic of Cove Haven as the moody, colorful backdrop for a music video shoot.
"Morris had this knack of being able to invent things that people didn't know they needed," says Wilkins of his uncle. "Everybody sort of has their claim to fame in life and his claim to fame was that he gave a lot of people a lot of love. He was a romantic at heart.”