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Washington Evening Journal
111 North Marion Avenue
Washington, IA 52353
319-653-2191
Hotel checks out after more than 120 years
BELLE PLAINE — Hearing no objections to its plans to demolish the old Herring Hotel, the Belle Plaine City Council voted last month to take the building down.
The city will remove significant architectural items before the demolition.
The city council voted in September to use up to $150,000 of American Rescue Plan Act money for the demolition. In October, the deposit for the teardown was $179,000. The difference will come out of a $50,000 payout from its umbrella insurance policy for damage during the 2020 derecho.
City Administrator Steve Beck said in September that the building is deteriorating to the point that saving it is no longer possible.
The building was privately owned and is on the National Register of Historic Places, though Beck said he’s not sure how that happened. “It’s been in terrible shape for 20 years.”
The building is vacant and it not to code, said Beck, so the City of Belle Plaine took possession of it as an abandoned property.
Beck said he doesn’t know what the city will do with the property. The lot is very small, he said.
The Herring Hotel was placed on the National Register in late 2008, admitted as an example of late 19th and early 20th century American craftsman.
The hotel was built in 1900, a two-story building with a full attic and basement with a stone foundation, according to the National Register form prepared by Architectural Historian Leah Rogers and research assistant Hesper Meidlinger.
The base of the foundation was rubble limestone, and the exterior wall was faced with cut blocks with a quarry-face finish.
The limestone wall was capped with red sandstone blocks with red-tinted mortar to match the sandstone color.
Various remodeling projects enlarged the building vertically and horizontally and resided the exterior walls.
The hotel fronted Eighth Avenue when it was built, but the main entrance was moved to 13th Street frontage during a 1922 remodeling of the building. The change may have been prompted by the shift the year before in the route of the Lincoln Highway, continuing due west along 13th Street instead of turning north on Eighth Avenue.
The hotel was initially L-shaped. The roofline was a truncated hipped roof capped with a widows walk balustrade around the flat deck.
The hotel was designed by Cedar Rapids architect Charles A. Dieman who was also responsible for the 1922 remodel. James Park of Belle Plaine was the general contractor.
The hotel’s heyday was the early 20th Century when the Lincoln Highway followed 13th Street and turned north on Eighth Avenue. The hotel was also near the railroad, only two blocks from the main passenger depot.
Owner William P. Herring ran a small auto bus from the hotel to the depot.
In 1919 the hotel added a service station on 13th Street to accommodate automobile traffic.
The hotel served as the headquarters of the Lincoln Highway Glad Hand Club and was the official hotel for the American Motor League. Herring’s son and business partner, James, served as the local Lincoln Highway consul.
The first remodel was prompted by a fire that destroyed the attic and roof in February 1914. A third story was added, creating additional hotel rooms. Some of the rooms were rearranged to create private baths, and a large soft-water reservoir was added.
The main interior staircase was moved from the west side of the lobby to the southwest corner.
In 1919 the hotel was remodeled again. The project enlarged the steam-heated garage, created a billiards room, a new boiler room and a gasoline station in the rear of the building.
In later years the garage housed auto sales businesses, including the Essex sale room operated by Edward Herring.
By the late 1940s, the hotel was rundown. In the mid-1950s, the entire exterior of the hotel was faced with a faux brick which was still largely in place when the hotel was placed on the National Register.
In the 1970s the building was The Graham House. Residents could rent overnight or long-term. Some of the rooms were combined to create larger living spaces.
In the late 20th century, the hotel served as a station for the Greyhound bus line.
A laundromat in the basement served tenants and the general public and continued to operate after the Belle Plaine Historical Society acquired the building.
In the late 1990s, vinyl siding was added to the second and third floors on the Eighth Avenue side.
In 2008, when the application to the National Register was processed, the building was vacant and being rehabilitated by the owner James Morrow, and his daughter, Kristine Pope.
