The Clarke Hotel is a historic hotel in

Hastings, Nebraska Hastings is a List of cities in Nebraska, city in and the county seat of Adams County, Nebraska, Adams County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 25,152 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Neb ...

, included on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1987. The Clarke Hotel, named for prominent Hasting businessman Alonzo L. Clarke, originated in 1914 as a project of the Hastings Chamber of Commence and was built through sale of stock to local residents. The architect, C. W. Way, and the construction company, John Hempel Company, were both from Hastings; and local craftsman made everything from the hotel's bricks to its oak

millwork Millwork is historically any wood-mill produced decorative material used in building construction. Stock profiled and patterned millwork building components fabricated by milling at a planing mill can usually be installed with minimal alterat ...

and

mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

floors. The hotel includes a famous grill room, which has a series of murals painted by Italian artist Giuseppe Aprea depicting seventeenth-century European tavern scenes. A 1916 addition to the six-story,

Renaissance Revival Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th-century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range of ...

-style building increased its size to 170 "absolutely fireproof" rooms and added

ballroom A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called ''balls''. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially histori ...

seating for 300. For the next seventy years, the Clarke Hotel served as the social center for the region. Among notables who visited it were former President

William Howard Taft William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) served as the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and the tenth chief justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930. He is the only person to have held both offices. ...

and future President

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...

. After extensive renovation in 1987, the Clarke Hotel became the Kensington-Evergreen Senior Living Communities.Kensington-Evergreen website.
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References

{{Reflist Buildings and structures in Hastings, Nebraska National Register of Historic Places in Adams County, Nebraska