The Northwestern Hotel is a historic building located in the East Village of

Des Moines, Iowa Des Moines is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Iowa, most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is the county seat of Polk County, Iowa, Polk County with parts extending into Warren County, Iowa, Wa ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. It was listed 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 1984. In 2017 it was included as a

contributing property In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic dist ...

in the East Des Moines Industrial Historic District.

History

Opening in 1916, the Northwestern Hotel was built to serve the needs of railroad employees and passengers from the nearby

Chicago and North Western The Chicago and North Western was a Class I railroad in the Midwestern United States. It was also known as the "North Western". The railroad operated more than of track at the turn of the 20th century, and over of track in seven states befor ...

depot, and other people of modest means. It was particularly popular with people during the

Iowa State Fair The Iowa State Fair is an annual state fair held in Des Moines, Iowa, every August. It began in 1854 and has been held on the Iowa State Fairgrounds since 1886. It is based in the state capital Des Moines, Iowa over an 11 day period in August ...

. with The hotel also had an arrangement with the railroad to accommodate its employees in their rooms. This building replaced a previous hotel with the same name in the same location. It was built by Otto Starzinger, whose parents Frank and Anna built and ran the hotel before him. Other businesses housed on the first floor included a restaurant, cigar stand, and a drug store. Eventually, the building went into a slow period of decline before Polk County officials forced it to close in 1982. A group of lawyers remodeled the building for office use in 1983. The building currently houses retail space on the first floor.

Architecture

The building was designed by the prominent Des Moines architectural firm of Proudfoot, Bird & Rawson. It is a three-story structure with a decorative

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

at the roofline. Most of the building's decorations were limited to the lobby of the hotel when it was constructed. The first floor housed retail space in addition to the hotel's lobby. A ballroom, with its own skylight, and guest rooms were on the second floor. The guest rooms of the second and third floor were generally small and were arranged around spaces with skylights. Some of the larger suites, which had a view of the capitol building, had their own bathrooms. The other guest rooms shared bathrooms. The building was originally designed to be six stories high, but it had to be scaled back to three. However, the underpinnings of the building exist to support additional stories, and cast concrete supports and a fourth-floor fireplace are located in the attic.

References

{{Historic Des Moines structures Hotel buildings completed in 1916 Buildings and structures in Des Moines, Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Des Moines, Iowa Hotel buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa Renaissance Revival architecture in Iowa Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in Iowa