And we're back to Harrisburg for this one. According to my research this massive hotel sat on the northeast corner of Second and Strawberry streets--yes, right where the Harrisburg Hilton is today.
I found this hotel through an unusual route. In working on my family genealogy I did some research on the Robert Lamberton family, a very prominent Pennsylvania family in the second half of the 1800s. A Dickinson graduate and local attorney, Robert Lamberton was named president of Lehigh University in 1880. (History people, stay with me. The rest of you are free to look at the pictures and then move on.)
Robert's wife was Annie Buehler, one of six children of William Buehler, who at one point ran his family's very respectable Buehler's Hotel in Harrisburg. This is the hotel Charles Dickens stayed when passing through Harrisburg during his first visit to the United States in 1842 (to read about where he stayed in York, see Hotels of the Past #31).
Text from the historical marker in Harrisburg (I'll have to go take a picture of it one of these days):
On the site directly across the street stood the Eagle Hotel, a three-story brick structure opened by George Buehler in January of 1812. It was here that Charles Dickens stayed when touring America in 1842 during which time he authored American Notes and in which he praised the hotel's proprietor. The Eagle Hotel was enlarged under the new ownership of the Bolton family in the early 1860s when it was renamed the Bolton Hotel. At that time, a series of neighboring townhouses that had earlier been joined together to form the Eagle were capped with a fourth and fifth floor and adorned in Second Empire architectural styling. Both the Eagle and the Bolton represented popular destinations for noted individuals and politicians of the 19th century. The building was demolished in 1990 to accommodate the development of the adjacent Hilton Harrisburg.
By 1915, when the postcard was sent, the hotel was advertising itself as "the Commercial man's best friend" and "the only Family Hotel in the city" (guess that makes it the Hampton Inn of its day).
An article that appeared in the Harrisburg Telegraph on January 6, 1928, describes some of the history of the Buehler Hotel/Bolton House:
Why was I following this trail even though I'm not at all related to Annie Buehler Lamberton? My great-great-grandmother, Mary Spain, an Irish immigrant and widow who lost all three of her children when they were young adults, was the cook in the Lamberton home for 40 years. I can only imagine the relationship those two women--Annie and Mary--had, but I would love to know more.
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