For several decades beginning in the early 1900s, the Queen City Hotel stood at the center of a vibrant African American community along 7th Avenue North. During the segregation era, this area housed many businesses catering specifically to African Americans. The hotel was founded by former slave Robert Walker, who had previously worked as a cook and as a drayman and hackman, and the first Columbus City Directory in 1912 lists him running a boarding house at 1504 7th Avenue North; by the 1920s the structure was listed as the Queen City Hotel. In the late ’40s, Ed Bush bought the property from Walker’s estate, tore down the original wooden building, and built a two-story brick hotel that officially opened in 1948. Bush, who had worked as a bellboy at the downtown Gilmer Hotel and later opened several businesses on Catfish Alley with financial assistance from Gilmer owner J. W. Slaughter, was also a member of the Rhythm Kings, a leading local jazz and blues band that played at the Queen City’s ballroom and toured regionally. The Queen City Hotel anchored the Seventh Avenue North district, known locally as down on the block, which stretched from 13th to 20th streets and fanned out several blocks in each direction. Clubs and cafes in the area featured blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues, and the hotel housed visiting musical celebrities including B. B. King, Duke Ellington, and James Brown, as well as professional African American athletes. Locals recalled nationally prominent musicians performing at venues such as the Blue Room and the Savoy, and other gathering places for dancing or listening to music included the Elks Club, the Deluxe Café, Richardson Café, the Cozy Corner, the Tic Toc 1 and Tic Toc 2, the Red Rooster, and later the Flamingo Lounge, Ladies Inn, the Cotton Club, and the Crystal Room. Like many African American business districts across the nation, Seventh Avenue North declined after the end of official segregation. In 1996 the Weatherspoon family bought the vacant Queen City Hotel, but despite a campaign to preserve the building, it was demolished in 2007. An informal festival celebrating the neighborhood’s cultural legacy began in the early 1980s, and by 2010 the Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival was drawing over 10,000 visitors.
