The Elbert Files: Hotel’s storied history
Hallways in the upper floors of the newly renovated Hotel Fort Des Moines are finished with a unique carpet that lists 10 events from the 102-year-old building’s history.
My favorite: “1939 – Police liquor squad raids Log Cabin room: 128 men & four women arrested for illicit prohibition-era activities, due to tip from men’s wives.”
Also on the carpet are references to Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev’s 1959 visit and Amelia Earhart’s 1933 appearance before the Des Moines Women’s Club where she recounted her record-setting solo flight – the first ever by a woman – across the Atlantic Ocean.
Famed pilot Charles Lindbergh was another featured speaker and overnight guest at the hotel. His first visit was in 1927, just three months after his historic flight across the Atlantic, although his name is not on the timeline carpet.
Nor does the carpet mention other celebrity guests, who ranged from Jack Benny to Cher, Mae West to Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash to Elizabeth Taylor.
Of the 12 presidents who stayed at the hotel, only two – John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson – are mentioned on the timeline carpet.
Of the hundreds of political events held at the hotel, my favorite was the 1980 Iowa caucuses. On caucus night, Republicans meeting in the grand ballroom failed to produce timely computer results for their presidential straw poll. Sometime after midnight, Iowa GOP Chairman Steve Roberts declared George H.W. Bush the winner by default. Some believe that questionable result inspired Ronald Reagan to thrash Bush in the subsequent New Hampshire primary and go on to win the presidency.
The earliest notation on the timeline carpet is for 1918 when “Local businessmen, 60 shareholders announce plans for 10-story hotel.”
The original announcement appeared in the Des Moines Tribune on Jan. 25, 1918, in a headline that contained three miscues.
One was the cost, which was placed at $1.2 million, but turned out to be closer to $2 million.
Another was the building’s height. The hotel wound up being 11 stories after magazine publisher E.T. Meredith “walked by when it was under construction and said, ‘I’d like to have a suite up there,” according to Invison Architecture’s Mike Bechtel, who helped bring to fruition the building’s recent $50 million makeover.
The final miscue was the name. The original plan was to call it “The Hotel Des Moines.” The word “Fort” was added while the building was under construction, presumably to honor the earliest white settlement in the area. The original settlement in 1843 was a military fort, which incorporated as Fort Des Moines in 1851 but was shortened to Des Moines six years later.
My colleague Michael Gartner wrote a wonderful history of the hotel for Cityview magazine seven years ago, explaining that “city fathers got together” to build a “great hotel” at a time when “the population of Des Moines had nearly doubled in 20 years, to about 120,000.”
Gartner’s article coincided with the purchase of the hotel for $4 million by Coralville-based Hawkeye Hotels from longtime local owner Jeff Hunter.
Hunter had done years of prep work for restoring the hotel to its original glamour, but failed to put together the financing required for a first-class makeover.
Hawkeye Hotels, with properties in 22 states, had the resources and took over the project with Hunter’s blessing.
Architect Bechtel, who led a Des Moines Historical Society tour of the hotel in October, explained that Hawkeye’s Raj Patel was the only developer willing to undertake the extensive restoration Hunter wanted. A key piece of that restoration involved opening up the first-floor by removing an extension of the second floor ballroom added during the 1950s that had cut into the original high-ceilinged lobby.
One final note: The timeline carpet, like the 1918 headline, contains a miscue. The carpet reports that in 2019, “Hotel Fort Des Moines reopens in centennial year after full renovation.”
For various reasons, including the COVID pandemic, the hotel did not reopen until this year, but most would agree the result was worth the wait.