Hotels

In the late 1800s, two hotels stood on opposite sides of the street in a prime location beside the businesses of Old Wooden Row and near the Lowell and Hastings Railroad depot erected on Washington Street in 1887. On the north side, the brick building at 401 E. Main was originally built as a wagon works, then renovated into a hotel in 1883 with money raised by eastside residents. It became the Davis House from 1884 to 1895, later the Brace Hotel in 1899, and then the Lowell House, before closing in 1909. William Christiansen bought the building in 1936 for an ice cream and paddlepop manufactory, removed its dilapidated third story, sold ice cream cones, and rented frozen food lockers before home freezers were common. On the south side, a three-story brick hotel called Clifton House was built about 1868 on the site of today's bank and later appeared on maps as Commercial House. The town's public well and pump stood in the middle of the street in front of it. In 1881, half the hotel was moved to the street behind and used as a tenement house, and the rest was torn down in 1887 by a local doctor who built his house there. The State Savings Bank opened on that site in 1961, and Harold Englehardt later played a key role in reorganizing and reestablishing a bank after the Great Depression and willed 12 million dollars to the people of Lowell. The southeast corner of the intersection had a building as early as 1851, when George K. White ran a cobbler shop there while also serving as postmaster and keeping the village mail in a drawer under his cobbler's bench.

Lowell, Michigan · United States