The Hotel Jamestown will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a special lunch and panel discussion in the Crystal Ballroom at noon Thursday, Dec. 5. P-J photos by Michael Zabrodsky

A landmark downtown Jamestown building will celebrate its 100th anniversary on Thursday with a special event.

The Hotel Jamestown will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a special lunch and panel discussion in the Crystal Ballroom led by Greg Peterson at noon Thursday, Dec. 5. The panel will include members of the Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame, including Randy Anderson, Scott Kindberg, Mike Goldman and Bruce Battler.

The event will highlight the Jamestown Hotel’s storied past, from its grand opening on December 31, 1924 to its role as a gathering place for locals, visitors and famed celebrities, including sports figures and Lucille Ball. Greg Peterson, a well-known documenter of local history, will lead a lively conversation about the famed sports banquets and figures who graced the hotel. A brief history of the hotel and the shared 100th anniversary of WJTN, which began in the hotel, will be shared by Dennis Webster.

“We are incredibly excited to mark this milestone and invite our community to be a part of the celebration,” said Joe Gerace, executive director of the Jamestown Housing Authority. “The Jamestown Hotel has been a cornerstone of downtown Jamestown for 100 years, and we look forward to hearing from those who have shared in its history, whether through personal memories or simply enjoying the hotel as a part of their lives.”

Attendees will have the opportunity to share their own stories and memories of the Jamestown Hotel. The event will also feature a special commemorative display of photographs from the hotel’s century-long legacy.

Admission is $15 per person, which includes lunch and participation in the panel discussion. Jamestown Housing Authority residents can attend free.

STORIED HISTORY

The influx of furniture buyers flooding into the Furniture Mart building and local furniture companies prompted several local businessmen to consider opening a hotel after the Furniture Market on Second and Washington streets opened in 1917. The Hotel Samuels, built after the fire that destroyed the old Sherman House in 1910, was at the time the only first-class hotel in Jamestown. The hotel was built at a cost of almost $2 million after several local officials decided Jamestown needed a modern, first-class hotel. They engaged the Hunkin-Conkey Construction Company of Cleveland to build on the site of the former First Presbyterian Church.

Frank O. Anderson, a principal figure in the movement to build the hotel, was the first president of the Jamestown Hotel management corporation with Frank W. Bigelow as vice president, William M. Blackstone as secretary and Fletcher Goodwill as treasurer. Lloyd Robinson, who later served as secretary of the New York State Hotel Association, was its first manager.

The Jamestown Hotel opened with more than 800 people crowded into the hotel’s dining room and ballroom on New Year’s Eve, 1924-25, according to The Post-Journal’s archives.

“The Hotel Jamestown, towering majestically above the adjacent buildings and lending a touch of the metropolitan to the downtown section, is without doubt one of the largest and finest hotels that any city the size of Jamestown can boast and it now stands as a monument to those Jamestown citizens who conceived and planned its erection and who gave of their time and financial assistance in order that another of Jamestown’s dreams might be realized,” The Jamestown Evening Journal wrote upon the hotel’s opening.”

According to a 25th anniversary story about the hotel published in The Post-Journal, the building was unique in that it was built and operated as a combination hotel and office building. In 1949, it had 300 hotel rooms, 90 offices and six stores facing Cherry and Third streets.

The building was sold in 1955 after stockholders approved sale of the building for $1 million to the International Hotel Corp. At the time of the sale there were roughly 300 local investors. A local group repurchased the hotel in 1964 but ran into financial troubles as well.

TRANSITION TO HOUSING

In 1969, the Hotel Jamestown transitioned from a hotel to senior citizen housing. While the furniture boom of the 1910s created a market for a hotel, the popularity of motels and the interstate transportation system helped decrease demand for the downtown hotel. After several attempts at operating, including on a limited basis, the Hotel Jamestown closed on April 1, 1968. After about a year and a half closed, the hotel reopened as a residential apartment building and social center for the elderly, the first project of its kind to be completed under the federal Housing and Urban Development Department’s “Operation Turn-Key.”

All but six of its 104 apartments were occupied when the Hotel Jamestown reopened in 1969. The Hotel Jamestown has operated since then under the auspices of the Jamestown Housing Authority.