LeClaire Hotel is an historic building located in downtown

Moline, Illinois Moline ( ) is a city located in Rock Island County, Illinois, United States. With a population of 42,985 in 2020, it is the largest city in Rock Island County. Moline is one of the Quad Cities, along with neighboring East Moline, Illinois, East M ...

, United States. It was named a Moline Historic Landmark in 1993, and it was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1994. The building now houses apartments and is known as the LeClaire Apartments.

History

The building was built in 1922 on the east side of downtown Moline. At the time it was built it was the

tallest building This list of tallest buildings includes skyscrapers with continuously occupiable floors and a height of at least . Nonbuilding structure, Non-building structures, such as towers, are not included in this list (for these, see ''List of tallest ...

in what today is known as the

Quad Cities The Quad Cities is a region of cities (originally four, see History) in the U.S. states of Iowa and Illinois: Davenport and Bettendorf in southeastern Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline and East Moline in northwestern Illinois. These cities are t ...

. It is named after

Antoine LeClaire Antoine Le Claire (also "LeClaire"; December 15, 1797 – September 25, 1861) was a US Army interpreter, landowner in Scott County, Iowa, and Rock Island County, Illinois, businessman, philanthropist and principal founder of Davenport, Iowa. ...

, a

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

interpreter who served at the treaty signing ceremony that ended the

Black Hawk War The Black Hawk War was a conflict between the United States and Native Americans led by Black Hawk, a Sauk leader. The war erupted after Black Hawk and a group of Sauks, Meskwakis (Fox), and Kickapoos, known as the "British Band", crosse ...

. He and his wife, the daughter of a Sauk chief, were significant landowners in the area. Most of their property was just across the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

, but they also owned land that became the original plat for the city of Moline. The LeClaire Hotel was a luxury hotel that hosted celebrities, including Jack Benny, and US presidents, including

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

and

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

. There was a ballroom on the fifteenth floor called the Top Hat that hosted tea dances that were accompanied by a big band orchestra. The hotel closed in the mid-1980s and sat for ten years without an owner. The Alexander Company bought the property and conducted extensive renovations from 1995-1996 to convert the building into an apartment building. Monarch Investment and Management Group bought the property from Kimberly Clarke in 2015 and they plan to make all the units market-rate apartments as the affordable units become available.

Architecture

The 15-story building is tall, and is supported by a reinforced concrete superstructure. The exterior is covered in brick, with stone covering the ground floor and the

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian language, Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft ...

. It features a symmetrical façade, a rounded arch entry flanked by rounded arch windows,

belt course A belt course, also called a string course or sill course, is a continuous row or layer of stones or brick set in a wall. Set in line with window sills, it helps to make the horizontal line of the sills visually more prominent. Set between the f ...

s, and deep projecting

eave The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural styl ...

s with bracketing. The interior features elements such as the wood-paneled pier supports, checkerboard patterned flooring, mezzanine stairway marble treads, newel posts, rails, and

balustrade A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its con ...

ironwork. The beamed ceiling and

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

ornamental motifs were executed by

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

artisan Fedrico Aquadro.

References

External links

{{NRHP in Rock Island County, Illinois Hotel buildings completed in 1915 Renaissance Revival architecture in Illinois Commercial architecture in Illinois Buildings and structures in Moline, Illinois National Register of Historic Places in Rock Island County, Illinois Hotel buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois Residential skyscrapers in Illinois Skyscrapers in Illinois Chicago school architecture in Illinois 1915 establishments in Illinois