The Colonial Hotel Part 2

Back in late December of last year, Jim Mihalek – formerly of Lorain – was nice enough to send me some great newspaper clippings, one of which was about a fire at the Colonial Hotel on the night before it was about to be demolished due to urban renewal. The Lorain Journal article was dated March 14, 1978

Jim told me in an email that his family used to drive by the Colonial when they went to visit his grandmother, who lived in the high-rise on Seventh Street. "I remember when they tore down the Colonial. I picked up a couple of bricks from it."

Unfortunately, Jim didn't grab what surely must have been the most tempting artifact. "I was not brave enough to try and snag the HOTEL sign that was lying in the rubble!" he humorously noted.

Anyway, special thanks to Jim for the article, which appears below.

Fire Mars Last Night of Colonial Hotel
By M. R. KROPKO
Journal Staff Writer

THE COLONIAL HOTEL was alive with activity again in its last night standing in Lorain. But it wasn't a happy occasion.

A fire gutted portions of three floors of the building as firemen climbed stairways and scoured rooms to battle a fire of suspicious origin.

The three-story brick structure, at 303 Fourth Street in Lorain's urban renewal project area, has been vacant for nearly six months, awaiting the arrival of a demolition crew. It has stood there since the early part of this century, and at one time was regarded as one of the top hotels in the city.

The demolition is scheduled to begin today.

The fire has been officially referred to the department's fire prevention bureau for investigation, but the demolition plans have not been delayed.

Firemen at the nearby number one station were alerted to the fire shortly after 7:30 p.m. by a pedestrian on Fourth Street, firefighter John Petrillo said last night.

"THERE WAS someone pounding on the garage door. It was a middle-aged woman, and she said the hotel down the street was on fire. My first impression was that it must be the Antlers, but when I looked down the street at the Colonial, it was all red," Petrillo said.

Assistant Chief Andrew Torok said firefighters found one of the first floor rooms on the west side of the building completely involved in flames.

The front door was locked, and some firemen forced it open as others busted out windows on the Reid Avenue side of the building.

Torok said the only window broken out before firemen arrived was the window of the room that was ablaze.

DENSE SMOKE filled the area as the firefighters soaked the fire. Torok said the blaze quickly spread from the first floor room up pipes and walls in to second and third floor rooms directly above.

The fire did not present problems the firefighters might have faced once at the Colonial. All rooms were vacant and no utilities service the building.

"The building was not in bad shape, considering it's part of urban renewal. All the stairs were still there, and there were no holes in the floors, except for the ones we made," fire Lt. Clarence Jenkins said.

The Elmar Demolition Company of Elyria in January was awarded a $35,990 contract to demolish the Colonial Hotel and Moose Hall buildings. A message from Safety Director Richard Koba's office instructed the firemen to be aware of street closings today near the intersection of Fourth and Reid because of the demolotion.

No estimate of damage was made because of the demolition plans. No injuries were reported.

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It's funny to look back and realize that forty years ago, urban renewal seemed like a good idea. All it seemed to accomplish in Downtown Lorain is produce a few unappealing buildings and lots of vacant lots.

I look at the sad Meridian Shopping Plaza – with the tiny, hole-in-the-wall Post Office, the internet café, dollar store and budget grocery store – and wish that the Colonial Hotel had never been torn down.

The Colonial Hotel Part 1

Last week I mentioned the Colonial Hotel in the post with the 'then and now' photos of Fifth Street looking west. In the photo, you could see it off in the distance beyond Ted Jacobs.

Do you remember the Colonial? I only have a vague recollection of it.

The earliest listing in the city directories that I could find for it was in the 1912 edition as the Colonial Apartments. It began being listed as the Colonial Hotel in the 1919-1920 edition.

Above is a pretty good photo of what it looked like (Click on it for a larger image.) The photo and caption above are from an article in the Monday, April 13, 1925 edition of the Lorain Times-Herald. The article was about the reopening of the hotel after it was wrecked by the June 28, 1924 Lorain Tornado.

Much of the article on microfilm was illegible due to poor reproduction quality, but it noted, "Practically all the remains of the old hotel are the outer walls. A new lobby, new rooms, new equipment have been installed.

"The front wall has been extended to the sidewalk, providing a lobby containing 1,700 square feet of floor space. Asbestone, a fire-proof material, has been used for the floor.

"One of the fire-proof features of the Colonial are the solid brick walls encasing the front and rear stairways. Every room in the building is located within 50 feet of one of the stairs."

It sounds like everything was done to keep it from being damaged in a fire, which turned out to be somewhat ironic in view of the last days of the hotel, some fifty-three years later.

Tomorrow: the end of the Colonial Hotel

The View Down Fourth Street Then & Now

Here's a great photo from the archives of the Black River Historical Society that should bring back some pleasant memories of Lorain's heyday. It's a vintage shot looking west at Fourth Street from Broadway.

1960's newspaper ad

The Flame Cafeteria at the left side of the photo was at 400 Broadway, and it first appeared in the city directory in the 1969 edition. It succeeded another cafeteria at that location, the Muth Cafeteria Restaurant.

Along that side of the street in the photo are both some well-remembered businesses and some that I've never heard of. At 115 Fourth Street was the Price Insurance Agency, and at 129 was Lynn's Self Serve Department Store.

At 209 Fourth Street was the well-known Ted Jacobs women's clothing store. And the tall building in the distance, after the Ted Jacobs parking lot, was the Colonial Hotel.

And here's the 'now' view from this past weekend (below). Of course, the traffic light is long gone, along with most of the traffic. I had no trouble taking the shot on Saturday morning; no pedestrian walked into the shot, and only one lonely car interrupted my photo.

Currently occupying the former Flame space is the Deja Vu nightclub. The former Lynn's was most recently Club West Fitness for many years, but is now vacant. The Ted Jacobs building is currently home to an office of the Ohio Department of Jobs & Family Services. And after that is the Meridian shopping plaza.

I've mentioned taking trumpet lessons along with my brothers on Saturday mornings in the late 1960's and early 1970's, and the view from Alex Visci's original music studio on the other side of Fourth looked down at this strip of businesses. I don't remember the Lynn's store at all, but I do recall that a drug store was in there after that.

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UPDATE (July 1, 2016)
Fixed the title of this post (originally had it identified as Fifth Street. See, you can live in the Lorain area for more than 50 years and still not know your way around!