Dublin Core
Title
Hotel West / West's Hotel / Old Hotel: Advertisement
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Description
"Hotel West. Twenty-seven years of continuous service for Sugar Grove. The following is printed from a Catalogue of Sugar Grove School 1895: 'Wm. West, our able hotel man, the owner and proprietor of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' furnishes table board from Monday noon to Friday noon inclusive, at only $1.62 per week; and the whole seven days (21 meals) fro $2.62. Formerly 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Wm. West, Proprietor, Sugar Grove, Illinois"
The ornate building that served as a boarding house for student scholars called Uncle Tom's Cabin burned downed in 1879, only 3 years after it was built. It was a great loss as Thomas Judd “Uncle Tom” 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.
The ornate building that served as a boarding house for student scholars called Uncle Tom's Cabin burned downed in 1879, only 3 years after it was built. It was a great loss as Thomas Judd “Uncle Tom” 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.
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