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Wenonah Hotel as seen from Wenonah Park. |
The Wenonah Hotel (1908-1977)
Water St. & Center Ave., Bay City
Hotels are like business calling cards to a community. They give prospective visitors some indication of a community’s success.
When the Wenonah Hotel opened it’s doors for business at 5 o’clock on November 9, 1908, it was not only a monument to Bay City’s success, it set a vision and expectation for the future. That evening 1,000 ticketed guests gathered inside the spacious dining room of the hotel to be participate in celebrating the city's marque hotel.
The city had good reason to take pride in the new Wenonah Hotel, it was huge with 200 rooms, and was facilitated with the finest amenities of the time. An article in the Bay City Times that day boastfully said,
“It combines the features of both a tourist and commercial hotel, and in its entire scope and all its appointments and outfit it is surpassed by no hotel in the United States save in size in a few of the larger cities.“
Alfred E. Bousfield led the group of businessmen that built the Wenonah Hotel, and they made sure that its design and size was more than befitting of the city’s status as Michigan's third largest city after the merger with West Bay City three years earlier. The city was also a major industrial center with several enterprises that were among the countries largest in the manufacture of wooden-ware products, locomotive cranes and shipbuilding. The peak lumbering years had past, but the future was bright for the city because of these industries.
Hover, it wasn't good enough to just erect a high quality hotel on the south east corner of Water and Center where the Fraser House had burned down two years earlier. The new hotel needed to have a green area and a view of the river. Several building on the west of Water would have to be torn down to make way for a new Wenonah Park.
The Wenonah Hotel was not only a commercial success, it marked a major turning in the city's history. The city owed its rapid growth to the lumbering boom, had become a modern community of industries and culture. The new park and hotel were designed for the future, quickly became commercial success. So much so that the hotel was expanded in 1925 adding 54 more rooms.
By the 1950s, the hotel began falter from the pressures of a changing world. The primary mode of travel was the automobile which gave birth to low cost motels. And, many of the city's seasoned industries that justified the existence of the Wenonah Hotel were struggling in the face of stiffer competition. The hotel struggled under several difference ownerships until about 1965 when it ended up in bankruptcy court. Local businessman, Patrick J. Trahan, bought the hotel believing he could turn it around, but his attempt ended in 1868 when he sold it to John Rapanos, of Midland, and he converted the hotel into a rental complex for business offices and residential apartments, which kept the hotel a float. The hotel that once symbolized the city's prosperity now emulated the city declining status. The city's once mighty industrial base had eroded and many of its citizens had to the new suburbs that used to be farming land.
On December 10, 1977, the history of the Wenonah Hotel ended when it was destroyed by a terrifying fire.
Heritage/Writings/ {Opening of the Wenonah Hotel.} (Includes links to additional history pages.)
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