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Carleton Place Heritage Project - Part 2

Hotel Culture and the Mississippi Hotel: Heart of the Community (1872-Present)

          Hotel culture had been evolving for two centuries in North America by the time the Mississippi Hotel was built. Originally, inns and taverns had taken the form of small buildings or houses whose owners rented out beds to multiple people at a time. Meals were taken together in the host’s dining room at prescribed hours, and guests were expected to be on their best behavior regardless of class or station. By the 1820s, new ideas about privacy and cleanliness had led to the development of more segregated hotel accommodations, which included more diversified gathering spaces like sitting rooms and porches. With this also came a growing social emphasis on the needs and expectations of guests rather than those of the inn’s proprietor.[1]
         
          North American hotel culture entered a kind of renaissance in the mid-19th century. Improved cross-continental infrastructure and faster means of transportation had led to an increasing number of recreational and professional travelers. This meant a greater revenue potential for innkeepers, and a highly competitive market soon developed in which ever more emphasis was placed on advertising, reputation, style, and comfort.[2]
          During this time, standards of architectural and decorative style became increasingly important, and mansions of the wealthy were often bought to be subdivided into hotel accommodations. This tradition continued to be echoed even after designing hotels became the norm, with hotels mimicking and exaggerating the styles of affluent residences well into the 20th century.[3] Across North America, ‘inns’ and ‘taverns’ became differentiated from ‘hotels,’ with the latter referring specifically to luxury accommodations. This was no accident, as ‘hotel’ was a derivative of ‘hotel de ville,’ the term for a French nobleman’s city residence.[4] The different degrees of comfort that became available to guests quickly resulted in the separation of accommodations according to class, with the best lodgings reserved only for those who could afford it.[5] This led to an interesting social development however, wherein anyone willing to pay could ostensibly inhabit the role of a higher social class. By the late 19th century, this phenomenon had expanded into a popular and intrinsically superficial hotel subculture - a social arena in which class was both revered and parodied, and where guests came to see and be seen.[6] Hotel society became highly fashionable during this time, and both amateur and professional authors traversed the continent writing guides and critiques of the most fashionable places to visit.[7]
          Around this time, Napoleon Lavallee and his family were traveling southwest across America towards California. While abroad, they would have seen much of what hotel culture had to offer. In the major cities of America, cultural fallout following the American war of independence had resulted in a growing emphasis on French instead of the formerly popular English taste, and this was manifested in hotel designs across the country. Similar post-colonial sentiments existed in Australia where the Lavallee’s headed next, and there they would have also encountered French styles.[8] The latest fashion in architectural taste in Australia was the Second Empire style, which featured angular mansard roofs, dormer windows, and functional and decorative additions like porches, towers, and classicized ornament. Napoleon Lavallee would have seen and experienced these features firsthand, and would have taken the ideas home with him when he and his wife returned to Canada in the late 1850s.
          In 1870, the year construction began on the Mississippi Hotel, the Second Empire style was the cutting edge of architectural fashion in Canada.[9] From its earliest stages, the hotel was following in the footsteps of its antecedents, mirroring the most fashionable residences and public buildings of its time. Over the preceding two decades however, only six other buildings in this style appear in the Parks Canada Register of Historic Sites, and among these, the Mississippi Hotel is the fifth earliest to be completed. While the register does not include all of the buildings in this style that would have existed at the time, the register does demonstrate Lavallee’s shrewd anticipation of popular trends. From the 1870s onwards the style would proliferate rapidly in Canada - a fact reflected in the fifty-five Second Empire buildings listed in the register between 1870 and 1896.[10] The Mississippi, it seems, with its porches, dormers, and stone trim, may also have influenced the design of other hotels in the Carleton Place area. The Queen’s Royal Hotel just outside of town was completed in the Second Empire fashion in 1899, and the redbrick Queens Hotel further up Bridge Street not only added a two-storey porch shortly after its construction, but also a limestone facing in the 1950s.[11]
                   
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A timeline of Canadian buildings erected in the French Second Empire style, constructed between 1854 and 1875:


Note: The Parliament Buildings are included in this timeline by the Parks Canada Register of Historic Sites because they are among the earliest public buildings in Canada to employ mansard roofs - an important element of the Second Empire style. These buildings are, however, principally in the style of the Gothic Revival.
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          Around the time the Mississippi Hotel was completed however, style wasn’t the only thing hoteliers needed to consider. In fact, “to know how to keep a hotel” became a common phrase referring to a task of near-impossible complexity.[12] The norms of what guests could expect in terms of style and comfort had become relatively standardized, and soon the job of a hotelier extended to the pursuit of novel amenities to attract, entertain, and improve the lives of guests. These often took the form of technological advances, with hotel’s racing to offer conveniences like telephones, plumbed hot water, electricity, elevators, and other gimmicks that added to a guest’s experience. Such amenities even extended beyond the hotel itself, in the form of private omnibuses carrying travelers to and from the nearest stations.[13]

          The Mississippi Hotel appears to have kept up with these trends. The hotel’s original register was a multifaceted device, with canisters of matches and a striking board for visitors wishing to smoke while waiting at the front desk. It also featured trays for cards and stationary, a brass bell, and engraved tin plating that advertised both local businesses and the “fine wines, liquors, and cigars” available in the hotel bar.[14] The hotel had its aforementioned omnibus service (popular in larger cities), and later a cards room with an “automatic cigar lighter.”[15] During Walter McIlquham’s expansions in the 1890s, the Mississippi acquired “hot air and hot water distributors,” and also adopted a feature that had become popular in so-called 'American Palace Hotels' - sample rooms. This addition took the form a two-storey structure facing onto Lake Avenue, and served as a rentable venue where merchants and traveling salespeople could exhibit their wares.[16] A kind of predecessor to the modern boutique-hotel, the ever changing displays of goods in the sample rooms attracted guests, shoppers, and gawkers alike, and enhanced the hotels reputation as a social and commercial centre.
          By the beginning of the 20th century, North American hotels had developed a reputation as ‘lavish palaces of consumption,’ and despite the constant changes in fashions, technologies, and hotel culture, the Mississippi Hotel successfully participated in that.[17] The hotel had quickly become known, not only as the “the leading hotel in Carleton Place,” but also across Ontario as “one of the finest hotels between Ottawa and Toronto.”[18] Though the building would gradually go into decline over the next century and pass through many names and owners, this remarkable piece of Carleton Place’s heritage would continue to serve its community. What is more, the community was responsive. They came together at various times to save the hotel - which came to be known as the ‘Grand Ole Lady’ - from both fire and demolition.[19] Through the ingenuity of its original owners and the steady influx of guests provided by the railroad, the Mississippi Hotel shone as a jewel of the community from its completion well into the early 20th century, and it has survived to us today. This year, the Mississippi Hotel - now the Grand Hotel - will celebrate its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. If history is any judge, it will continue to perform its role as a heart of the community for many years to come.
               
Footnotes:
  1. Molly W. Berger, Hotel Dreams: Luxury, Technology, and Urban Ambition in America, 1829-1929 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 12-14.
     
  2. Bradford T. Hudson, “Railway Hotels: From Infrastructure to Destination,” found in Michael V. Conlin and Geoffrey R. Bird, Railway Heritage and Tourism: Global Perspectives (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2014): 18-20.
     
  3. Berger, Hotel Dreams, 13; John Chan, 2021, “Hotel Canada: Re-Imagining a National Narrative,” G. Graduate Research, University of British Columbia, (May 31, 2021): 24-28. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0397234.24-28.
     
  4. Berger, Hotel Dreams, 14-15.
     
  5. Ibid., 120-121.
     
  6. Ibid., 125-135.
     
  7. Ibid., 113.
     
  8. Miles, Lewis, “The French Disconnection.” French Australian Review: Explorations, no. 3 (July 1986): 25-31, url: https://www.isfar.org.au/explorations-no-3-jul-1986/.
     
  9. Christina Cameron and Janet Wright, “Second Empire Style in Canadian Architecture,” Parks Canada, Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History, no. 24 (September 2006): 1, url: http://parkscanadahistory.com/series/chs/24/chs24-1n.htm.
     
  10. Cameron and Wright, “Second Empire Style in Canadian Architecture,” 3-4, url: http://parkscanadahistory.com/series/chs/24/chs24-1u.htm, and http://parkscanadahistory.com/series/chs/24/chs24-1u2.htm.
     
  11. Carleton Place (and District) Chamber of Commerce, and Carleton Place and Beckwith Historical Society, Tour 2: Self-Guided Walking Tours of Carleton Place, 2022, 2, found in Microsoft Teams SSAC Media Archive, Project – Carleton Place, Booklets, Walking Tours, V3-Walking Guide 2020-Tour 2, accessed February 10, 2022; Linda Seccaspina, “Queen’s Royal Hotel 1899 Guest List – Names Names Names,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, November 30, 2017, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/tag/queens-royal-hotel/.
     
  12. Berger, Hotel Dreams, 113.
     
  13. Ibid., 115, 138-140.
     
  14. Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum, “Do you recognize this artifact?” Facebook, June 18, 2012, url:  https://www.facebook.com/Carletonplacemuseum/photos/a.173161679407401/388662887857278/; Linda Seccaspina, “David McIntosh - Front Desk Man at the Mississippi Hotel,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, April 27, 2017, accessed March 20, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/david-mcintosh-front-desk-man-at-the-mississippi-hotel/.
     
  15. Linda Seccaspina, “Burnin’ Old Memories – The Mississippi Hotel Fire,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, August 14, 2015, accessed February 16, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/burnin-old-memories-the-mississippi-hotel-fire/.
     
  16. Berger, Hotel Dreams, 137; Linda Seccaspina, “Romancing the Mississippi Hotel,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, April 24, 2017, accessed February 16, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/romancing-the-mississippi-hotel/.
     
  17. Berger, Hotel Dreams, 137.
     
  18. “A Review of Prosperous Towns in the Counties of Lanark and Grenville,” Industrial Edition of Prosperous Towns in Lanark and Grenville Counties, Microsoft Teams SSAC Media Archive, Project – Carleton Place, Mississippi Hotel [Set2], pp5Reports, no. 1883581-10; “Some Heritage Buildings,” Heritage Carleton Place, accessed March 5, 2022, url: https://heritagecarletonplace.com/3/miscellaneous1.htm.
     
  19. Lyle Dillabough, “The year Stompin' Tom first came to Carleton Place,” Carleton Place Almonte Canadian Gazette, September 29, 2017, accessed April 4, 2022, url: https://www.mississauga.com/opinion-story/7583179-the-year-stompin-tom-first-came-to-carleton-place/; “LACAC Optimistic about hotel sale,” Carleton Place Canadian Newspaper, December 8, 1993, found in Microsoft Teams SSAC Media Archive, Project – Carleton Place, Mississippi Hotel [Set2], pp5Reports, no. 201223172. Accessed February 10, 2022.

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