The hotel which would become the Cambridge Hotel is shown sometime before 1898 in this photo from the Allen County Historical Society. The third floor of the hotel was heavily damaged in a fire on Christmas Eve in 1898 and was removed. The building today is owned by the City of Lima, which uses it for meeting rooms.
Courtesy of Allen County Historical Society
Since the early days of Lima when John P. Mitchell welcomed weary travelers to his log inn on the Public Square, hotels had always been “the open door of the community,” William Rusler wrote in his 1921 history of Allen County.
During the heyday of rail travel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that first open door a visitor was likely to come to led into one of the hotels near the city’s railroad stations.
In Lima, the oldest and most acclaimed of these hotels was the Hotel French, which opened not long after the first railroads laid track through Lima in the mid-1850s. The French and the Florentine Hotel, built next door in 1880 and eventually bought by the owners of the French, were just southeast of the intersection of the main east-west (Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago) and north-south (Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton) railroads and their depots. Nearby, at Wayne and Jackson streets, the Ohio Southern (later Detroit, Toledo & Ironton) railroad would build a passenger station in 1898.
The Hotel French, which during the 1880s was praised for its menu and known for the celebrities who occasionally hopped off the train for a quick meal, began to decline after railroad dining cars became prevalent. The French closed shortly after the beginning of the 20th century. The Florentine outlived the French by about a decade.
The other hotels – the Cambridge, Holleran and Erie – probably had more colorful histories.
Behind the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago (later the Pennsylvania) station at the north end of Tanner Street (Central Avenue today) was the ambitiously named International Hotel. The hotel opened its doors to the community July 2, 1883 – and all sorts of community members rushed in. It was a memorable opening.
In a July 7, 1883, front-page story, the Lima Democratic Times described the hotel as a “handsome three-story brick” building that was “one of the most conveniently arranged houses in Lima.” Twenty-five rooms occupied the top two floors while the first floor contained offices and a barroom.
“The music for the opening was furnished by the Hibernian Band, and Prof. Stuebgen’s orchestra furnished the music for the dance,” the newspaper noted, adding, “The crowd in attendance was very large, the capacious barroom crowded to its uttermost and other crowds of people were continually passing up and down the stairways, on a tour of inspection through the rooms.”
Many apparently did a lot of their inspecting in the bar. After what the Democratic Times called a crowd of “bums” had gathered in the bar and refused to leave, “it was found necessary to use force to clear the room.” The “bums,” now outside, responded by bombarding the hotel with whatever they could get their hands on, “breaking the plate glass windows, marring the woodwork and doing other damage.”
And, when the owner stepped out “to quell the disturbance and protect his property,” the mob “turned on him and his assistants and worsted them,” the Democratic Times reported. “They then ran into the barroom and carried away a lot of flasks of liquor, tobacco and cigars.”
The International didn’t remain the International for long. By 1888, the original proprietor had died, oil had been discovered in Lima, the Pennsylvania had a new depot, and the International Hotel had become the Arlington House.
Over a half century, the hotel would change proprietors and names many times. Two years after becoming the Arlington it was the Hotel Mack, then the Northrop House, then the Cambridge Hotel, then the Turf Hotel … Along the way, the “handsome three-story brick” hotel became a two-story brick hotel after a fire on Christmas Eve 1898 heavily damaged the third floor, which subsequently was removed.
In February 1921, the hotel again came under new management and returned to being the Cambridge Hotel. In 1936, it became Taylor Glass Co.
On South Main Street, two hotels were a stone’s throw from the Erie railroad passenger station, which was on the southwest corner of Main and First streets.
The Holleran Hotel was established in 1898 at 953 S. Main St. “The hotel was built just north of the major railroad intersection, and it catered to the working class,” the News wrote in August 2012. In 1921, it was the headquarters for a gang led by George “Red” McGahan, a man the News described in 1948 as “the John Dillinger of the early 1920s.”
“It was he who led a band of outlaws into Lima on Saturday, May 22, 1921, after they had held up the Huntertown, Indiana, bank and escaped with more than $30,000 in cash and negotiable securities,” the News wrote October 10, 1948. “The gang,” the newspaper noted, “had been in and out of Lima at intervals and always upon returning would meet either at the hotel or one of three south side bar rooms.”
Acting on a tip after the Huntertown robbery, police surrounded the Holleran and a nearby house, where they confronted members of the gang, touching off a running gun battle. “Hundreds of shots were exchanged by the gunmen and police as they battled for more than an hour in practically every section of the south side of Lima,” the News wrote. McGahan was wounded but escaped. A member of his gang was killed.
On December 20, 1959, a fire swept through the second floor of the Holleran, which the News wrote at the time, “catered to railroaders and old-age pensioners.” Six men died in the fire. Three days after the fire, Lima’s fire chief charged that two exits at the hotel were padlocked when the fire broke out and his men had to break down the doors to gain entrance to fight the fire.
“After a state investigation, officials said there wasn’t enough evidence for criminal prosecution, but the Holleran Hotel had come to an end,” the News wrote in 2012.
Just south of the Holleran was the Erie Hotel at 975 S. Main St. The hotel was built around the turn of the 20th century by John P. O’Connell, a native of County Kerry, Ireland. “O’Connell came to Lima as a youth,” the News wrote on his death in February 1937. “Later he became interested in real estate operations, built the Erie Hotel, an early well-known South Main Street hostelry, and operated the three-story edifice personally until 1912.”
Not much is known of the hotel’s history, though news stories from the second decade of the 20th century show it was a frequent target of police gambling raids and investigations of mysterious deaths in and around it. In August 1914, the Allen County Republican-Gazette reported that “a mob collected and attempted to lynch an Italian who had cut a man in front of the Erie Hotel on South Main Street.”
In its later years, the bottom floor of the old hotel was occupied by the Midway Grill, which had been closed for about 20 years when the building was destroyed in a 1992 fire.
Today, the Erie Hotel site is a vacant lot. Just north of that lot is a parking lot, which occupies the site where the Holleran Hotel once stood. The Holleran was destroyed by fire in September 1985. The French House became a warehouse in 1910 and, by the 1950s, had been reduced to one story and was being used by a beverage distributor. The Florentine was long gone by then.
The Cambridge found new life. After Taylor Glass operated out of the building into the 1990s, the city of Lima purchased it and the old railroad depot in 2002. The depot now houses the city utilities department while the hotel, now known as Cambridge Place, is devoted to meeting rooms.
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SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
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See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
