I remember being glued to the television set at my Arkadelphia home on that cold Sunday morning in February 1980 as the Marion Hotel and the adjacent Grady Manning Hotel in downtown Little Rock were imploded to make way for the Excelsior Hotel. It was such a major event that several Little Rock television stations carried live coverage.
The state's capital city has a rich history of downtown hotels, none more famous in the 20th Century than the Marion. Construction began in 1905, and the Marion was the tallest structure in the state from when it opened in 1907 until 1911. The man behind it was Herman Kahn, who moved to Little Rock from Frankfurt, Germany, in 1870. It was the start of a long history of family involvement in downtown Little Rock. Kahn's great-grandson, Jimmy Moses, has been the driving force behind many developments downtown in recent decades. Kahn and his sons, Sidney and Alfred, were involved in banking and real estate development. Sidney Kahn developed the Prospect Terrace neighborhood of Little Rock.
The 500-room hotel named after Herman Kahn's wife, Marion Cohn Kahn, had green carpets, bellboys in green uniforms and a marble fish pond in the lobby. The Marion billed itself as "the Meeting Place of Arkansas," and the state's top organizations began holding conventions there. Famous visitors included Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Helen Keller and Will Rogers. On June 10, 1949, Truman addressed those attending the reunion of the 35th Infantry Division at the Marion and closed by saying: "I hope we will have the usual good time and that everybody will go home without a headache."
Writer Richard Ford, who won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Independence Day, once lived in Room 600 of the Marion. Ford was born at Jackson, Miss., in 1944. His father had a heart attack when Ford was 8 and died when the future novelist was 16. Beginning in 1952, Ford spent summers in Little Rock with his maternal grandparents. Ford's grandfather, Ben Shelley, was the hotel manager.
The Marion sometimes was referred to as the "real state Capitol" since legislators congregated there during sessions, cutting after-hour deals and forging compromises. During its final decades, the Marion was owned by Southwest Hotels Inc. Henry Grady Manning had expanded the company to include hotels in Little Rock, Hot Springs, Memphis, Kansas City and Vicksburg, Miss. In Little Rock, Southwest owned the Albert Pike, Lafayette and Grady Manning hotels, in addition to the Marion. In Hot Springs, Southwest owned the Arlington and Majestic hotels. Only the Arlington continues to operate as a hotel.
After the Marion and Manning were razed, construction began on the Excelsior, which opened in 1982. It later became the Peabody Little Rock, and was reflagged as a Marriott in May 2013. The Excelsior was the brainchild of Batesville real estate developer Doyle Rogers Sr., who died in February 2013. A suite at the hotel is named for Rogers.
The Lafayette opened in 1925 and was one of the state's best-known hotels until its closure in 1973. Now known as the Lafayette Building, it houses offices and condominiums. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in September 1982.
Little Rock was growing during the 1920s, and an entity known as the Little Rock Hotel Co. decided to capitalize on that growth with a new hotel. A.D. Gates of St. Louis was the company president, and John Boyle of Little Rock was the vice president. The 10-story structure, which has a full basement, was designed by a St. Louis architect. The Lafayette opened on Sept. 2, 1925, with 300 fireproof guest rooms. The rooms, which featured private baths with running water, rented for $2.50 per night. The Great Depression caused business to collapse, and the Lafayette closed in 1933. The building remained vacant until a housing shortage caused by an influx of soldiers at Camp Robinson increased the demand for hotel rooms and apartments.
The Lafayette was purchased by Southwest Hotels and reopened in August 1941 with guest rooms reduced from 300 to 260. A coffee bar and lunch counter were added with an entrance off Sixth Street. The Optimist Club, Lions Club, Kiwanis Club and Civitan Club all began having meetings at the hotel. The Missouri Pacific and Rock Island railroads had ticket offices in the lobby. There was also a telephone answering service, a coin shop and a beauty parlor. The Gaslite Club opened in the basement and remained in business until the 1960s. There was another remodeling effort in 1953 as the hotel's owners tried to keep up with the growing number of motels and tourist courts on the highways leading in and out of Little Rock. The hotel closed in November 1973.
A few blocks away from the Lafayette, the Albert Pike opened in 1929. In 1971, Little Rock's Second Baptist Church bought the hotel for $740,000 and transformed it into a residence hotel. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
The 175-room Albert Pike was constructed at a cost of almost $1 million. It was built in the Italian-Spanish Revival style, which was popular in California at the time. The hotel is Little Rock's only remaining example of Spanish Revival architecture. At the time it opened, the Albert Pike was considered one of the finest hotels in the South.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate communications for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 06/24/2015