On Wednesday, January 10, 1923, a full page advertisement in the Marysville Appeal laid out the case for what became the Hotel Marysville.
“Fellow citizens of Yuba and Sutter counties,” the large bold headline over the 2,000 word argument began, “the opportunity is ours to start the greater development of our home community. The opportunity is ours to secure a large increase in our population. The opportunity is ours to take and to hold the lead in the Northern Sacramento Valley.”
The ad, paid for by “The Citizens’ Hotel Committee,” encouraged readers to purchase stock in the newly formed Marysville Hotel Company at $50 a share over time to guarantee the construction of a community-owned, multi-story modern hotel and ground floor commercial complex at the northwest corner of Fifth and E streets.
“We must get ready—be prepared—to take care of the great numbers of travelers and strangers who are coming into our midst. Our community is losing several hundred thousands of dollars every year through lack of adequate hotel facilities to meet the demands of the modern traveler,” the committee argued.
A heavy emphasis was placed on the consequences of not constructing a hotel to meet the demands of a growing number of tourists and businesses travelers who come and go in automobiles, and could choose to travel to a nearby community with modern hotel accommodations.
“A new hotel will do more for this entire community than any other single improvement,” the committee said. “Your subscription to the new hotel is just as important as any other, and unless you subscribe, your action will stand in the way of your own and your community’s progress.
“Build the new hotel and nothing can stop us. Fail to build it, and nothing can start us.”
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This Wednesday, December 11, 2024, a construction company hired by the City of Marysville will bring in heavy equipment to demolish the remnants of a community’s dream-come-true. It’s not the city’s fault things have come to this. But it is the city’s responsibility under the law to abate what has become a threat to the health and safety of the community. In this sense, the hotel’s future was doomed when fire June 15, 2024 roared through the five-story cement and brick structure, consuming the roof and compromising the integrity of the walls. Even to the most stubborn of those who had held out hope for some type of new purpose for the building, it was becoming clear there is no future it.
The Hotel Marysville broke ground in October of 1924, and opened in April of 1926. It operated as a hotel for just under 60 years. For four decades after its closure in the mid-1980s, through multiple owners, despite several ideas, it has languished. Not forgotten. Just standing, neglected, rain falling through a compromised roof, a tree growing in a room. The words “Hotel Marysville” on the side of the building continuing to fade with the passing of each decade, along with each new idea by each new owner for the past 40 years.
“Seventy-three years after drawing comparisons to the finest San Francisco hostelries, the lobby and ballroom of the Hotel Marysville is littered with old pipes, scrapped toilets and discarded refrigerators,” Eric Vodden wrote in the May 16, 1999 issue of the Appeal-Democrat.
“Despite the scattered debris, and charred remains from a 1993 fire, there are still signs of the 144-room, five-story hotel that was a city centerpiece,” he continued.
“The registration desk and nearby mail slots are still in place, along with the tile floor—chipped and covered with dust and broken glass—where nearly 500 invites attended the formal gala opening in April 1926. Two gaping holes in the ceiling—now leaving the floor open to the elements—once held glass skylights, allowing party-goers to dance under the stars,
Seven years later things had not improved. On June 6, 2006, under the headline, “Cycle of failed hope haunts hotel,” reporter Daniel Thigpen opened an article about how plans to renovate the hotel soured when the owners sued each other and the property was once again up for sale with, “For $3 million, you could have the one vacant building in Marysville that has caused more headaches than any other.”
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The Marysville Hotel Company included among its incorporators Cline Bull, whose Bull Tract became Olivehurst, and who lived with his wife at the hotel after it was constructed; and Frank M. Booth who, as mayor in October of 1922, named 400 Yuba and Sutter county residents to a committee to raise funds for the construction of the hotel.
“It is the duty of every citizen, as I see it, to show to the world that Marysville, representative of Sutter and Yuba counties, knows how to provide for the stranger within our gates,” Mayor Booth wrote in a letter to the committee appointees. “A group of forward-looking citizens have taken the initial steps in this public enterprise. They have incorporated the Marysville Hotel Company for the purpose of building a hotel that will fully meet our needs. It is in no sense a private enterprise. It is your enterprise and it is for your benefit.”
The board of directors of the hotel company were AH. Boulton, president, C.F. Aaron, vice-president, R.W. McCormick, secretary, and H.B.P Carden, treasurer.
Eight thousand shares of stock at $50 a share were sold, raising $400,000 for construction of a hotel estimated to cost between $300,000 and $350,000 on land that would cost $30,000.
The site included the former home of Norman and Phebe Rideout, a mansion that became the first location of Rideout Hospital.
The hotel company leased the hotel to established operators of other hotel locations, requiring the lease holder to furnish and maintain the building and pay all taxes and insurance.
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The Hotel Marysville constructed in 1926 was not the first in Marysville with that name. During the gold rush, a brewery known as the Hotel Marysville was established by the future son-in-law of pioneer John Sutter, near the landing for steamships. In fact, the actual name of the new hotel wasn’t settled on until after the design of the hotel and the fundraising began.
The Appeal ran a contest, and received many suggestions, among them Buttes Inn, Hotel Buttes, Butte Vista Tavern, Hotel Fremont, Hotel Ellis, the Stephen J. Field, the Dos Rios (Two Rivers), the Mary Covillaud Inn, Superb Inn, Marysville Inn, Yuba Delta Inn, Yuba Tavern, Hotel Covillaud, Yuba-Sutter Inn, and Yuba-Sutter Tavern.
Mrs. Hugh Moneur, prominent club woman of Yuba City, said from a marketing standpoint, the name should be the Hotel Marysville, but that from an historic perspective it should be named the Hotel Pioneer, in honor of the city’s storied gold rush beginnings. “Honest, earnest, capable, strong-willed, of indomitable courage and determined were the attributes of these people. They were living exemplars of helpfulness and good-will to all. The memory of our forefathers may be perpetuated by transmitting that wonderful spirit of the pioneer to the generation of the future.”
The marketing of Marysville won out and months after the October 1923 ground breaking the name was settled.
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Rumors of a hotel being constructed in Marysville began circulating even before World War I. A specific rumor in 1913 was that out of town capitalists planned to build a hotel where the Kelly Brothers had a livery stable on the east side of E Street between Second and Third Streets. The idea of selling stock in a community-based project was not original. It had been successful in other communities seeking the same advantage as Marysville.
With the impetus to construct a multi-story structure, the City of Marysville amended its building code in August of 1923 to allow for taller structures.
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The hotel opened for business on March 13, 1926, when the first guest registered was one D.L. Thomas of Pasadena, in town for a state buildings trades council meeting. The coffee shop in the main dining hall opened on April 2, offering seating for 120 including 17 stools at the counter. The large banquet room in the rear could accommodate 200, and became the center of social functions of all kinds.
“The kitchen is large and airy;” the Appeal reported on April 2, 1923. “The ice boxes are large enough so that the chef can age his own meat and keep food pure and wholesome indefinitely.”
The hotel had its own celebrity chef, Max Beri, “well known on the Pacific coast having been under Victor Hirtzler, the famous chef of the St. Francis hotel in San Francisco, and late of the Huntington Hotel apartments.”
A formal celebration was not conducted until April 9, when more than 300 attended a dinner for hotel operators from throughout California. The guest list included Gov. Friend W. Richardson and Sacramento Bee editor C.K. McClatchy.
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The Marysville Hotel Company owned the hotel and leased it to various operators until the 1950s. One of most detailed histories of the hotel is contained on the blogging site, The Bell Curve of Life, which reports that a group of local investors that included Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews, Isador and Doris Cheim, Mr. And Mrs. Ray Maxwell, Dr. and Mrs. Rocco Montano, Dr. and Mrs. James J. Hamilton, Dr. and Mrs. Stanley R. Parkinson, and Mr. And Mrs. Curt Otto, were listed as owners in 1963. That was the year the owners sued Newcomb Hotels, which held the lease, for $54,000 they were owed, and that was the year the bar and restaurant was padlocked by the IRS due to nonpayment of $10,000 in taxes.
By the time it was closed to residential tenants on Jan. 16, 1985, due to unpaid utility bills by out-of-town owners represented by a Sonoma developer, local influence over the operation of the building had ceased. In the early 1980s, then mayor Bill Young referred to the hotel as “the biggest den of inequity” in the city.
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Between its opening and its closing, the hotel played host to such social events as bridge club parties, regional conferences of Rotarians and Lions, weddings, concerts, theatre performances, lectures, and dances. It was visited by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bing Crosby, Roy Rogers, and other celebrities. A persistent but unverified story is that Rogers, who visited Marysville so often to hunt he purchased ranch property in both Yuba and Sutter counties, took one of his horses on a ride up an elevator.
During the Depression, in 1932, the state Board of Equalization allowed the hotel property to be reassessed to lower its tax bill to keep it in operation.
The hotel underwent a substantial remodel during World War II, and in 1950 the hotel owners agreed to let the City of Marysville place an air raid siren on the roof. On Dec. 23, 1955, when Marysville was evacuated due to a flood emergency, nurses brought some patients from Rideout Hospital to the top floor of the hotel.
When a Congressional delegation came to northern California to view damage aftger the 1955 flood, its base of operations was the Hotel Marysville.
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The final owners of the hotel until the city acquired the property in November organized under a limited liability company. limited liability company. Feather River Plaza LLC had the hotel for 17 years but despite investing in a set of plans could never put the capital together to fund a rehabilitation of the property. The city acquired the property and received $700,000 to settle a lawsuit against the owners for not abating the property after the fire.
J&M Environmental Inc. received an $800,000 contract to raze the building and cover the materials. The city is exploring grant funding through the federal Environmental Protection Agency to clear the site.
What comes after that is the second question most people ask about the hotel. Right now, the first question is what will happen to the bricks when it is torn down? And right now, the city said the answer is unknown, due to the presence of cancer-causing asbestos in the building.