The Hotel McDaniel

So far nothing interesting has come of the McDaniel action to quiet title, but I begin to get a notion of why John and Mary might have been interested, just now, in settling their ownership rights. They had plans that likely required capital.

Perhaps that was the motive in their decision to "clear their 40 acres of wooded land near Ainsworth" — possibly the northern 40 in dispute. They hired a man to look after the cutting and sawing of the timber, and I expect the McDaniels would sell the lumber or firewood thus produced.

That was just one minor announcement out of several that appeared in the October 5 Gazette. The other news was more surprising.

We now learn that in mid-summer 1917 John McDaniel had purchased the Transfer Hotel at 1162 North Clark Street in Chicago. He'd been operating it for three months, and evidently he liked the business so well that he meant to expand his holdings.

So he and Mary made a deal with George M. Grace, owner of the Westminster Hotel at 1219-1223 North Clark. Mr. Grace got the McDaniels' Hobart property, consisting of their Devonshire Street home and a rental house on Michigan Avenue that sat on two acres of land; the McDaniels got the Westminster Hotel.

John and Mary announced a public auction to be held on Tuesday afternoon, October 9, in their home on Devonshire, where they would offer all their household and kitchen furnishings for sale. The sale took place as scheduled, and the next day the McDaniels packed up whatever remained of their possessions and moved to the Westminster Hotel. Hobartites no longer, now they were Chicago hoteliers.

I've not been able to find any information on either of these hotels, although they seem to have been substantial establishments. The Gazette describes both as "modern four-story structures," with the Transfer Hotel having 42 rooms and the Westminster 84. (On the other hand, when the owner of an 84-room hotel in Chicago considers two houses in Hobart a fair trade for it, it probably wasn't a five-star hotel.) In 1893 there was a Westminster Hotel at 264-266 North Clark; in 1894, another Westminster Hotel operated at 462 North Clark. But to suppose that the Gazette made a mistake in the address (mentioned two separate times) and one of these eventually became the McDaniels' property is a little far-fetched even for me. As for the Transfer Hotel, apparently it foundered and vanished into the ocean of time without so much as a ripple of history* (none perceptible, at any rate, to a half-hearted on-line researcher like me). I can only hope that future issues of the Hobart papers will have progress reports on the McDaniels that may give me more information.

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*Is that an awesome metaphor, or what?


Sources:
♦ A Week at the Fair. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Company, 1893. http://books.google.com/books?id=9BlAAAAAYAAJ&dq (accessed 12 Dec. 2010).
♦ Chicago Blue Book. Chicago: The Chicago Directory Company, 1894. http://www.archive.org/stream/chicagobluebooko1895chic#page/xii/mode/2up (accessed 12 Dec. 2010).
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 5 Oct. 1917; 12 Oct. 1917.
♦ "McDaniel Buys Hotel." Hobart Gazette 5 Oct. 1917.
♦ "Public Sale." Hobart Gazette 5 Oct. 1917.