In the early 1950s, Alberta Ellis created lodging for African-Americans traveling through Springfield on Route 66 by buying an old city hospital building on North Benton Avenue for $10,000 and remodeling it into a hotel with guest rooms, a large dining hall, a rumpus room, beauty salon, barbershop, and snack bar. Known as Miss Alberta, she ran the family-staffed hotel three blocks north of Route 66, and beginning in 1954 it was listed in The Negro Travelers' Green Book. Over the years, travelers from across the United States and other countries stayed there, and many famous entertainers who were denied lodging in Springfield's segregated hotels, including Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Frankie Lymon, Stevie Wonder, and The Harlem Globetrotters, were hosted there. She also owned a 10-acre property called The Farm, 10 miles west of Springfield on the north side of Route 66, where she and her family raised chickens and honey bees and grew fruit and produce for meals served to hotel guests; it also accommodated overflow guests and travelers who wanted to stay and camp. She operated the hotel until the mid-1960s, when the City acquired it through eminent domain, and she died shortly afterward in 1966 at age 56.
