France Hotel
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The France Hotel is a historic hotel located at 118 E. Court St. in Paris, Illinois. The Classical Revival building was constructed in 1924. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


History

The hotel was constructed in 1924 to replace the old Paris Hotel, which was destroyed in a fire in 1918. The hotel's construction was sponsored by the Paris Chamber of Commerce and funded by the citizens of Paris; as most hotels of the era were built by private firms, this was considered unusual. The Chamber decided upon the site of the hotel in 1922 and chose the building's architect, but planning and construction delays pushed the project back into 1923. By September 1923, the Chamber had nearly exhausted its funds, and the hotel's contractor intended to place a lien on the hotel site if they could not find more money. The citizens of Paris responded by raising $191,000 in a fundraising effort, providing the necessary funds to complete the hotel. Paris was a major railroad junction in the 1920s, as three major rail lines passed through the city. In addition, as Paris was the county seat of
Edgar County Edgar County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 16,866. Its county seat is Paris. History Edgar County was formed out of Clark County in 1823. It was named for John Edgar ...
, it served as the center for county administration and business activities. The hotel therefore became an important meeting place for Edgar County's citizens and travelers through Paris. Visitors considered the France Hotel to have more modern facilities than any other Paris hotel; these facilities included warm and cold running water, an elevator, and bathrooms in each room. In addition, the hotel included amenities and business such as a barber shop, beauty parlor, coffee shop, banquet hall, and private dining rooms, which served local residents as well as visitors. The France Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 3, 1987. The
Paris Elks Lodge No. 812 Building The Paris Elks Lodge No. 812 Building is a historic building located at 111 E. Washington St. in Paris, Illinois. The building served as a meeting place for the Paris lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. The building was constr ...
, which borders the hotel to the south, was added to the National Register at the same time.


Architecture

Architect Ewing Miller, Sr., of the Fort Wayne, Indiana, architectural firm Johnson, Miller & Miller, designed the hotel in the Classical Revival style. The four-story building was built in red brick and uses Bedford limestone in many of its decorations. The building's entrance is set in smooth limestone and is topped by an arched stone decoration resembling a
fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window, often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, and is sometimes hinged to a transom. Th ...
. A pair of French doors are located on either side of the entrance; each set of doors is topped by a wooden pediment and stone arches. The upper stories of the building each have six bays of windows; the center two bays are surrounded by vertical courses of limestone, with decorative stone pediments topping the third-floor windows. An
architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; from it, architrave "chief beam", also called an epistyle; from Greek ἐπίστυλον ''epistylon'' "door frame") is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can ...
is situated above the fourth-floor windows; the architrave is topped by a brick frieze with limestone roundels, which is itself topped by a
cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...
and parapet roofline. Stone urns rest atop the corners and center of the roofline.


Notes

{{National Register of Historic Places Paris, Illinois National Register of Historic Places in Edgar County, Illinois Hotel buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois Neoclassical architecture in Illinois 1924 establishments in Illinois Hotel buildings completed in 1924