Inn · Marshall, Michigan · Built 1834–1835; rear wing late 1870s
National House Inn
Listed on the National Register as National House
A two-story L-shaped brick hotel of 1835 facing Marshall's old courthouse square, a stop on the Territorial Road to Detroit, reported to be the first brick building in Calhoun County and reopened as an inn in 1977.
History
Marshall was first settled in 1831, and only three years later Andrew Mann, a businessman and vestryman of Trinity Episcopal Church, hired George Bentley and Nathan Benedict to build a brick hotel on the square laid out for the county courthouse. Finished in 1835, it is reported to have been the first brick building in Calhoun County. Mann opened it with a formal ball on January 1, 1836, and leased it to another keeper the following year. The hotel prospered by feeding and lodging travelers on the Territorial Road to and from Detroit, and until the courthouse was finished in 1838 it also housed the circuit court and many county meetings. In 1837 it was one of three taverns in Marshall, and by 1877 one of eight hotels in the county seat; a brick rear wing was added in the late 1870s.
After Mrs. R.A. Facey sold it in 1879, the building stopped serving travelers for nearly a century. In the 1880s and 1890s it housed a factory making wagons and windmills, and around 1900 Dr. Andrew Dean converted it into apartments, which it remained, divided into low-rent flats. Early in 1976 two local couples, Harold and Mrs. Minick and Norman and Mrs. Kinney, bought it. Within a year they had chemically stripped the painted brick, reopened bricked-up windows, removed a concrete stoop, refitted the original L with fourteen rooms and private baths, and reopened it as the National House Inn in 1977.
“The National House is reported to have been the first brick building constructed in Calhoun County.”
Architecture
The hotel is a two-story building of common-bond brick on a sandstone foundation, laid out as an L under gable roofs. The main east front on Parkview has a central doorway with a segmental head framing a transom and side panels, flanked by irregularly placed windows, with five evenly spaced windows above; all openings have plain stone lintels and slip sills. The north gable end has three windows and a door below, four above and a small window under the eaves, and a four-bay gabled extension continues it to the west as the short leg of the L. A six-bay, two-story brick wing of the late 1870s fills the inside corner. Little original interior trim survived the apartment years, though some early floorboards remain.
What to look for
- Segmental-headed central doorway with transom and side panels
- Plain stone lintels and slip sills on every window
- L-shaped plan with the gabled west extension
- Late-1870s brick wing in the inside corner
- Old courthouse square across Parkview
Setting
The National House stands at 102 South Parkview on the southwest side of the old Calhoun County courthouse square, now a circle on Michigan Avenue at the center of Marshall. The town is known for its many mid-nineteenth-century houses and commercial buildings, several of them facing the same square, and the Marshall historic district surrounds the inn.
Timeline
- 1834Andrew Mann hires Bentley and Benedict to build a hotel
- 1836Opened with a ball on January 1
- 1837One of three taverns in Marshall
- late 1870sBrick rear wing added
- 1879Hotel sold and closed; later a wagon and windmill factory
- c. 1900Converted to apartments
- 1977Restored and reopened as the National House Inn
Where sources differ
- Its status as the first brick building in Calhoun County is reported, not documented, in the nomination.
