Old Hotel West

The first "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was built in 1876 to board students of the Sugar Grove Normal and Industrial School. The residential building was named in honor of Thomas Judd "Uncle Tom" for his generosity in founding the Sugar Grove Normal and Industrial School and donating the land. The building also functioned as a Train Depot and Restaurant. It was located at the northwest corner of Main St. and the Railroad tracks.

The ornate building of Uncle Tom's Cabin burned downed in 1879, only 3 years after it was built. It was a great loss as Thomas Judd had no insurance.  However, he then built a new hotel on the same site.  Since there was no insurance on the original boarding house, the community came together with labor and materials, and rebuilt it using the stacked lumber method for the outside walls.  The hotel was later purchased by W.M. West and came to be known as Hotel West.  

During the first half of the 1900s, Kitty Lorah owned the building.  Sundays found automobiles with license plates from as far away as Wisconsin and Iowa parked in front of the hotel where Kitty served family style meals, all of which were cooked on two gigantic cast iron cook stoves in the basement kitchen.  Her dining room was filled with families on Sundays and railroad personnel at noon during the week.  Kitty continued to operate her restaurant and manage the apartments in the hotel, well into her later years.  She could be found seated outside early on summer mornings, shelling a bushel of peas or stinging a like amount of beans, which were headed for her huge kettles and the dinner plates of diners. 

After many years of housing students, guests, and residents, the Old Hotel West was torn down in 1999.  It became the site of Veterans Park on the west side of Main Street just north of the railroad tracks.

Source:  "Sin-Qua-Sip:  A History of Sugar Grove Township, Kane County, Illinois" by Patsy Mighell Paxton.