Hotel · Ishpeming, Michigan · Built 1931–1932
Mather Inn
A red-brick Georgian Revival hotel of 1931–32 in the iron-mining town of Ishpeming, financed largely by Cleveland-Cliffs president William G. Mather and set in terraced grounds by Warren Manning; it housed the Anatomy of a Murder company in 1959.
History
Ishpeming's leading hotel, the Nelson House, burned in August 1928. William Gwinn Mather, president since 1890 of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, which kept its auditing and engineering offices in town, saw that the iron trade needed a place to meet and lodge visitors. He offered that if residents pledged about $40,000, the rest of a hotel costing around $130,000 would be found. When local pledges fell short he made up the difference himself, and the town agreed the building should carry his name. Cleveland-Cliffs held three-quarters of the stock and some 325 local shareholders the rest. The board hired the Boston architect James H. Ritchie and the landscape designer Warren H. Manning, a former Olmsted assistant who had already planned the company town of Gwinn. Built in 1931 and 1932 on the Nelson House site, the Mather Inn opened in January 1932.
For half a century it was the town's hotel and gathering place. In the summer of 1959 Otto Preminger's company lodged here while filming Anatomy of a Murder around Marquette County; Duke Ellington is said to have worked on the score during his stay. The building was named a Michigan State Historic Site in 1976 and listed on the National Register in December 1978, when it was slated for rehabilitation. A preservation society formed in the 1980s, but in 1987 the hotel closed and was sold. It stood empty for years until work began in 2004, and by 2024 the restored building had reopened as The Mather, mainly as apartments.
“The Mather Inn represents an attractive example of provincial Georgian Revival design despite its irregular detail and composite of styles.”
Architecture
The inn is a concrete and steel framed building faced in red brick with white trim under an asphalt-shingled hipped roof, 144 feet wide, set on a slope above the town. A recessed center bay holds a two-story portico of six square Doric columns topped by a balustrade with Chinese Chippendale fretwork, sheltering a three-sided entrance bay with ocular windows. The rest of the front is deliberately irregular: bay windows of different widths, dormers and eyebrow windows, and an apsidal one-story dining room with Palladian windows. The nomination calls the result provincial Georgian Revival with a composite of styles. Inside were a beamed, pine-paneled lobby, a men's club room, a sunken dining room and about sixty rooms. Manning's grounds include a semicircular boulder rock-garden wall and terraced brick steps.
What to look for
- Two-story portico of square Doric columns
- Fretwork balustrade over the portico
- Apsidal dining room with Palladian windows
- Manning's semicircular boulder rock-garden wall
- Eyebrow windows and dormers on the hipped roof
Setting
The inn occupies a sloping block bounded by Canda, Maple, Main and Barnum streets in Ishpeming, looking south over the town on the Marquette Iron Range, about fifteen miles west of Marquette and Lake Superior. A tall spruce moved from Mather's own estate stood in front as the town Christmas tree, and the iron-mining museums of the range are a short drive away.
Timeline
- 1928Nelson House burns in August
- 1931Construction begins with Mather's financing
- 1932Mather Inn opens in January
- 1959Anatomy of a Murder cast lodges at the inn
- 1978Listed on the National Register on December 20
- 1987Hotel closes and is sold
- 2024Restored building reopens as The Mather, mainly apartments
Where sources differ
- The nomination calls the building three stories yet describes rooms on a fourth floor; Wikipedia calls it four stories.
- The story that Duke Ellington composed the Anatomy of a Murder score while staying at the inn is widely repeated but not documented in the nomination.
