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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us February 7, 2005 The end of a classic edifice By Vickie Aldous Ashland Daily Tidings Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors ran outside from a play rehearsal, still clutching their scripts, as a wrecking ball slammed into the side of the historic Ashland Hotel. "Suddenly there was this gigantic boom as the ball hit the wall for the first time and the sound reverberated off the valley walls," said historic preservationist George Kramer, recalling townpeople's stories of the demolition of the hotel in 1961. OSF founder Angus Bowmer came out, surveyed the destruction, and pronounced, "It will be 20 years before they realize how stupid this was." For many Ashlanders, the razing of the hotel to make way for a First National Bank building was simply a mark of progress. The Mail Tribune reported that 90 year-old Clarence Lane, who remembered the opening of the hotel in 1889, "is philosophical as he watches the demolition crew at work. He has seen buildings and people come and go. To him, it is just the natural course of events, something to be remembered but not mourned." The article concludes, "To the sound of falling timbers and the rip of the wrecking ba(ll) Ashland moves on with its business of progress." Lost history Terry Skibby, who has amassed a huge collection of historic photographs of Ashland, sifted through a pile of photos of buildings that are now long gone. He paused to look at the tower, gables and verandah of the stately Ashland Hotel and recall its destruction. "I was saddened by it. It was such a nice thing. It would have been one of the most important landmarks in Ashland," Skibby said. "When you show the old photos to people, they miss that building�. It is one that everyone regrets, but at the time, I don't know that it bothered them." The L-shaped, 29,000-square-foot building occupied a prominent place in downtown Ashland, stretching along Main Street and Oak Street. The site is now home to the Wells Fargo Bank. Upon its completion in 1889, the Tidings gushed that it was "the finest hotel building of its kind in Oregon." The managers had traveled throughout the nation and brought home three freight cars-worth of furnishings, including "solid oak bedroom suites, handsome flowered Brussels carpets and tapestries, marble wash stands and crockery, and a fine Mathushek piano." A crowd of 400 thronged the hotel at its grand opening, marveling at the electric lights that had only arrived in Ashland a month before. Then named the Hotel Oregon and later Hotel Austin, the building was home to festive parties where people danced the polka, three-step and waltz. Palm trees graced the verandah, recalling an early tourist slogan that Ashland was the place "where the palm meets the pine." The hotel was built during a boom in the 1880s in Ashland when many brick buildings and mansions were constructed. But by 1907, the town had fallen on lean times. Needy families could come to the hotel and receive a pail of dinner left-overs for a dime. The hotel was nearly destroyed in 1929, when a fire burned off the roof, gutted the attic and second story, and badly damaged the ground floor. Lane, the man who was 90 at the time of the hotel's demolition, manned a fire hose to fight the blaze. The roof was replaced with tile, but builders did not recreate the gables and decorative spires of the original structure. A decade too late Bowmer's prediction that Ashlanders would someday lament the demolition of the hotel proved prescient. Concern over the loss of historic buildings in town came to a head in the early 1970s with the destruction of the E.K. Anderson House on Main Street, according to Skibby and Kramer. "It caught everyone's attention," Skibby said. "It was in mint shape. It was full of antiques. It was all original inside with the original woodwork. I remember a picture of Abraham Lincoln inside." The home's demolition prompted an attitude change that led to the creation of the Ashland Historic Commission, which reviews planning applications, as well as the city's three historic districts, according to Kramer. Prior to that time, some townspeople had even advocated leveling the historic railroad district and using urban renewal funds to build multi-family housing, he said. But the increasing awareness of the value of historic buildings came too late for the Ashland Hotel. "If the Ashland Hotel would have made it another five or 10 years, it would have survived," Kramer said. 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