Historic Hotel Manning gets a face-lift

The Hotel Manning has stood on the banks of the Des Moines River in Keosauqua for more than 100 years.

A relic of the days when steamboats sailed the river, the hotel has recently undergone a renovation to preserve its historic character for many years to come.

Tim Blair, president of the Hotel Manning Preservation Group, said that the renovations cost around $1.2 million, which qualified for historic tax credits.

The Hotel Manning association formed to purchase the hotel when the previous owner chose to sell it.

“It had not had anything done to it in over 10 years when we bought it in April of 2018,” Blair said.

The first addition was a courtyard between the Hotel Manning and the standard hotel, a newer addition to the building adding more rooms.

The updates include a new bar area in the hotel and renovations to the newer parts of the hotel.

Renovations on the historic part of the hotel began in 2020. Updates were made to the dining room and lobby — fixing damaged wallpaper, refinishing floors and adding a fresh coat of pain.

The fourteen historic rooms were renovated to add private bathrooms to each, including one room on the ground floor with ADA accessible facilities.

Blair says for the most part, the renovations are complete, with the exception of some painting and work on the third-floor apartment in the hotel, which is no longer considered historic, because it was renovated in the 1970s and ‘80s.

“Along the way we had baseball-sized hail that ruined the roof, we had a water main break that ruined several rooms in the river view — so it’s been a process,“ he said.

As the entire renovation needed to fall under historic preservation guidelines, Blair said finding finishes to replicate the older versions was sometimes challenging.

“We have great carpenters in the area that have done historic renovations. We have different woodworkers, craftsmen, that were able to reproduced spindles on stairways and those sort of things,” Blair said. “We used as much local contractors and crafters as we possibly could because we wanted to keep it a local project.”

The renovation included changes to the kitchen, which now can host chefs for occasional brunches and dinners.

“We don’t have a restaurant per say, but we do have an area that we can rotate a chef in once every couple of weeks or so and have an evening meal,” Blair said.

Blair says the hotel will be holding more events in the future, like music in the courtyard, and partnering with local artists to offer classes.

Blair says the support from Keosauqua and the surrounding community for the hotel is apparent.

“When you can raise $355,000 in a month from 88 different investors, that says a lot about community support and what people think of the area,” he said. “We were concerned, because if the hotel dies, then the town struggles as well.”