Patrick J. Ryan, a native of Ireland, arrived in Jacksonville in 1853 at age 23 and that year purchased the Palmetto Bowling Saloon, beginning a career as one of the town’s earliest and longest-term commercial property investors. This building served over time as a hotel, restaurant, office, ice cream parlor, tea room, wine tasting venue, and residence. After a disastrous fire in 1873 leveled the Union Hotel on California Street, the owner moved operations here until the brick U.S. Hotel opened in 1880 with a Tammany Day celebration, a Fourth of July Ball, and a visit by President Rutherford B. Hayes. Soon afterward, proprietor George M. Coburn operated the dwelling house as the Jacksonville Hotel under the slogan “first class house in every particular.”