Boarding
houses were a part of life in big cities.
Toledo in 1900 had more than sixty boarding houses, ranging from widows
renting a couple of spare bedrooms to small hotels. The Rathburn Hotel at 1221 Superior, for
example, listed itself as both a hotel and a boarding house in the city
directory. Many Toledo boarding houses
were connected with saloons and liveries, a sensible arrangement for serving a
transient clientele. Before the auto
age, most villages had one hotel.
Travelers could not count on a quick trip to the nearest city. If darkness was approaching one had to take
whatever lodgings were close at hand, and there was usually one place, one
choice. But if the village happened to
have a tourist attraction, one might have more choices.
My
mother’s home town fit that description.
A rural hamlet, Green Springs sits astraddle the Seneca/Sandusky county
line. The town was and is tiny, but at
one time, the village had abundant visitors.
A sulphur spring, for which the town is named, gushed three million
gallons of odoriferous water into a pond.
The spring, still flowing today, drew thousands of guests to its lodge,
sanitarium, and reputed curative properties.
In the heyday of the railroads, Green Springs needed more hotels, and
more guestrooms. A guest register and
accounting book has been preserved from the Finch Boarding House in Green
Springs for the years 1902 to 1910. The
register offers a look into travel at the opening of the twentieth century, and
confirms the needs and uses of tourism in a time long gone.[i]
In 1850, there was living in Green Spring (the “s” was
added later) a shoemaker named Elias Finch.
Elias, or E. B. as he was known, was a “York Stater,” and married to
Laura. Fast forward to 1880, and Mr.
Finch had given up shoemaking and was now proprietor of the Green Spring
Hotel. Besides his wife and three
younger daughters, he also had four lodgers.
Whether E. B. was running the hotel in retirement, or because of another
reason, he had made a life-altering change.
The
hotel was originally on ground across the road from the Oak Ridge
Sanitarium. Visitors from all over Ohio
visited the mineral spring baths. E. B.
Finch tried to cash in on some of the tourism dollars. Likely there were people who wished to “try
the cure,” yet could not afford the elegant “official” hotel. The gap was filled by E. B. Finch.
The
Finches acquired a large building across the road from the Spring. Hotels had occupied the site since 1838, and
sometime in the 1870s, the Finch Hotel took its turn, and welcomed guests for
at least twenty years. This first Finch
hotel had three floors, “with a large ballroom on the third floor where many
grand parties during the [18] 70s and 80s. . . .”
After
several years, the Finch Hotel moved to a more centrally located site in the
middle of the village, perhaps to be closer to the railroad. In 1887, E. B. Finch died and left the
running of the boarding house to his wife and younger daughters. Nancy Finch died in 1900, but the boarding
house kept on at least until the 1930s, The last Finch daughter, Belle Finch
Graydon, still had two roomers in 1930, but made no reference to it being a
boarding house, hotel, or anything else.
Belle died in 1942.
Names
in the register are difficult to trace.
Who was Otto Harzell, who sold something to the Finches, often several
times a month, until he died in 1907 at the age of 26? What nameless person sold them “milk and
onions” frequently? A fifty dollar
charge to J. B. Kanney? Kanney was a “bartender” in the village; did the
Finches sell liquor at their boarding house?
Why did business pick up in 1903?
What did 13 year old Macy Ludwig sell or do for $2.00?
When
I was young I often visited my grandparents in Green Springs. While there, I played on the site of the
original Finch Hotel. Bits and pieces of
ruined arbors and paths made it a great place to play in the 1960s. A hotel was still on the site, built after
the Finch family left, but long since turned into a retirement home. Hotel, boarding house, rooms for rent; in a
town as small as Green Springs, the term was flexible. As a “home away from home,” the Finch
Boarding House was home for many over the years. I hope guests had fond memories of the
village, as I do.
[i]
Paul Groth. Living Downtown: The History
of Residential Hotels in the United States (Berkeley, 1994), p. 92.
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