South Charleston is a village in the Springfield metropolitan area; it has a population of about 1,600. I had never heard of the place until a delightful postcard appeared on eBay showing this delightful small hotel, the Houston Inn. Its “Prairie School” characteristics were unmistakable , so strong that I wondered how it had been overlooked in the exemplary website “The Prairie School Traveler“.
Pork, Pennsylvania native Frank Gieselman founded the Houston Inn in 1911 as what one short news item calls a “fashionable hostelry”. What drew him to South Charleston, Ohio isn’t known but his business model becomes clear in the short social notes of area newspapers: multiple notes during 1912 suggest the inn’s dining room was an objective for autoists from Springfield, Dayton and communities as distant as Cincinnati and Cleveland. Their fried chicken was that good.
Target destinations like the Houston Inn were a frequent phenomenon in the early days of the automobile, when motorists needed an excuse to take a ride in the open countryside. The family outing could have involved a picnic lunch, but larger groups, especially those celebrating an event or intent on impressing friends or visiting relatives used the inn as a destination, where they could enjoy a leisurely meal, a little time for digestion, and then a slow return trip home. I grew up on the southwest edge of Chicago where there was a similar entertainment venue—which in its later stages became an unsavory place of questionable morality.
The Houston Inn’s architect-designer isn’t known, but he or she was clearly aware of the Prairie School idiom, incorporating narrow clapboard siding; broad roof overhangs; bold projections, such at the covered side entry and the rotated oriel second story bay. The restaurant seating capacity or the number of rooms aren’t known, but it is habitually identified as an upscale facility. Advertisements for staff (manager and household) offered $15 per month, plus room and board, during the late ‘teens.
Its life as an hotel were probably limited during the Great Depression. By 1945, the building had been purchased by a grocer; currently it is used as apartments. Apparently upper floors of the building are unused.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.