In 1882, John George and Margareta Braun began a hotel and restaurant business that lasted 55 years across three generations. The Braun became known for its food, offering a large pleasant dining room, meals and lunches, oysters served in all styles, and regular meals for 25¢, while serving travelers and local residents as a lively gathering place filled with piano music, local news, stories, and laughter. It struggled as a small hotel in a town with larger and more luxurious hotels. In 1917, J.G. Braun's son George Christian and his wife Catherine became the proprietors of The New Braun. George Christian Braun died in 1921 at age 47, and Catherine continued operating the Braun well into the Depression until the business was lost in bankruptcy in the late 1930s. For 15 years, the Braun gave Catherine and her four children a home, a livelihood, and ties to retailers in what is now the Gaslight District. The building was later used by the Petoskey Mattress Company and other businesses before becoming the Petoskey Hotel, then a women's clothing store owned by Harold Grant in 1975, and since 1996 a retail site for Gattle's fine linens, sold in Petoskey since the early 1900s.