The Marquette Hotel, aka The Park Hotel

By Roy (Bud) M. Davis                                   October 20, 2002                              Tri-City Record

     Have you ever heard of this place? Aha!  Bet I caught most of you!  Well… try The Park Hotel. Now you know the place about which I am talking.  It used to stand on the south side of West Main in Hartford, with Mary Street right next to it. And the old place came to mind recently when I was talking with Emma Sefcik, who is on her way to becoming one of Hartford’s premier historians. She used to walk past it every day when she was a kid.
      In 1910, W. J. Evans, proprietor of the hotel at Lawrence, purchased the property from the Stratton estate. A Hartford businessman, Ed Finley, moved a small house from there to adjoining property on Mary Street. Then Evans erected a fine three-story building with mansard roof and dormers. He opened its doors as the Marquette Hotel in 1911.
      That same year The Hartford Day Spring noted a squabble over rent occurring there. It seems a young man named Fred A. Roy came into Hartford with a company of actors for an engagement at The Academy of Music. They were called The Wahoo Medicine Show, and as Don Cochran delicately put it in the Day Spring, “…the company was wrecked upon the financial breakers here, and left town owing a week’s board bill at the Marquette.”  Fred Roy was from Niles, and according to businessmen there an exemplary young fellow. Sheriff B.J. Sowle immediately set out in pursuit of the company and brought Roy back to stand trial before Justice Court. The unfortunate young man said the real head of the Wahoo Company was a man named DeWitt. When he saw the troupe headed for financial disaster, he turned the management over to Roy and left him “with the sack to hold.”  Businessmen in Niles bailed out the young man, whose case was handled locally by Atty. C.M. Van Riper. I’m sure that Fred Roy thereupon returned to Niles a chastened and humbled would-be actor.
      The hotel flourished for years. At one time Bill and Hattie Shepard ran the dining room there. They had been in a little restaurant across from Ely Park, which they sold to Luzelle Summers, and was later known as The MerriLou Café. Bill and Hattie wanted to expand, and she was an excellent chef. Unfortunately, she became ill and died, leaving her husband bereft and the restaurant closed.
     In 1940, The Park Hotel came under the management of Mr. and Mrs. R.B. Erskine, whose son, Bob, attended Hartford High and became quite well known. I have chronicled his adventures elsewhere.
      Sometime during WWII, Stanley Brown bought the place. His son married a local girl, Jean Rhinehart; Marion was a classmate of hers in high school, as were many of our friends. At that time, Mr. Brown had an ad in The Day Spring as follows: “Free sleeping rooms for all soldiers en route on furlough. Clean, comfortable rooms and apt. for rent by the week or month.”  That was a most generous gesture on his part, and I hope many of the young servicemen passing through took advantage of his offer.
      The Park Hotel is gone now… a victim of progress. Small-town hotels have fallen on hard times, as have small towns. But the memories of those days when life was more simple, and people didn’t travel as far, are golden threads forever woven into the tapestry of our lives along the Paw Paw River.
 

Webmaster note:

      I felt compelled to insert this later photo of the Park Hotel, as this is exactly the way I remember it as my sister, Janet, and I walked along the west Mary Street sidewalk as we passed by every day on our way to school.  We lived over on W. South Street, which was about 3 blocks southwest of the hotel.  I do remember the Speed Limit 25 sign at the corner of Main and Mary Streets in front of the building, as well as the bushes on the west side in the picture. 
      As a HHS graduate of 1966, I am quite sure the Park Hotel was still in existence at that time.  Ron and I married in 1969 and  we left Hartford to become a Navy family for next six years.  The hotel no longer existed upon our return to the Hartford area in 1975.

Emma Thornburg Sefcik
May 20, 2003

Photo of the Marquette Hotel was contributed by Donna Bench. 
The Park Hotel photo was contributed by Bud Davis and Don McFarlin.