30 S. Carroll St. @ W. Main St.
Park Hotel 1st
Park Hotel 2nd 1871 1961
With its mansard roof, elegant detail and prime Capitol Square location, the French Second
Empire-style Park Hotel was hailed as "one of the handsomest of its kind in Wisconsin" when
it opened in 1871 at the corner of South Carroll and West Main Streets. Built of Milwaukee
cream-colored brick and Madison sandstone, the four-story hotel had 118 sleeping rooms with
marble fireplaces, "ladies' and gentlemen's balconies," and a special suite reserved for the
governor. The building saw the addition of a neo-classical facade in 1911 and then the
building was demolished in 1961 to make way for the Park Motor Inn, "Madison's newest motor
hotel," now called the Inn on the Park.
Park Hotel 3rd
Two hotels and two days in August tell the story of the seventies.
At decade's dawn, as Madison continues to fend off efforts to move the capital to Milwaukee, a constant and valid criticism is the city's lack of a first-class hotel. The Park Hotel is the business community's response.
In February 1870, during consideration of one more relocation bill, leading Madisonians seek state incorporation of the Park Hotel Company. The Assembly kills the relocation bill 55-31 on March 9, 1870, but the incorporation efforts continue. On March 18, 1870, the legislature charters Park Hotel Company; the great Founder Simeon Mills will become president, former governor Lucius Fairchild and former mayor Andrew Proudfit are among the directors.
The hotel gets good marks when it opens on August 19, 1871. Originally set for Mills' corner at Wisconsin and Main, then moved to the highest point between the lakes, the $125,000 edifice suits its new site well. Four stories of brick and stone under an elaborate mansard roof, a double-decker piazza along its 116 feet of Carroll Street frontage, the hotel has 118 sleeping rooms and boasts every convenience -- including the first full indoor plumbing on the Square.
Across Lake Monona, LakeSide House, the renovated and expanded Water Cure building, becomes the centerpiece of a thriving tourism trade. The cream-colored resort on the promontory with the sweeping panorama of the growing city skyline and the many amenities success-fully caters to the well-heeled carriage trade, particularly travelers from St. Louis. Thanks to the six rail lines serving the city by the summer of '71, Madison expands on the publicity started by Horace Greeley's 1855 tribute to develop a growing national reputation as a summer resort.
Then disaster strikes, as the LakeSide goes up in flames at half past seven on the morning of August 21, 1877. Three hours later, the property is just one great bed of ashes. The 60 guests save all their personal property, but our standing and future as a northern resort -- already battered by the national depression -- might never recover.
