Portland Hotel Company records

Collection

Identifier: Mss 745

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of records of the Portland Hotel and the company that built and owned it. Records include articles of incorporation and board of directors' minutes, 1888-1926; a stock ledger, 1891-1943; stock subscribers' assessments, 1889-1931; a stock dividend book, 1904-1940; a brochure, circa 1895; stationery; and a hotel register with entries for April-June, 1890.

Dates

1888-1943

Creator

Portland Hotel Company (Portland, Or.) (Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

The Oregon Historical Society owns the materials in the Research Library and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from copyright owners.

Administrative history

The Portland Hotel, in Portland, Oregon, began in 1883 as a project of railroad magnate Henry Villard. After Villard's financial failure, construction on the hotel came to a halt in 1884. It sat incomplete until 1888, when a group of Portland investors took over the project, and the hotel finally opened in 1890. For a time, it was the largest and most elegant hotel in the city, but by the 1940s, the hotel was struggling. In 1944, Meier & Frank purchased the building, and it was demolished and replaced with a parking lot in 1951. In the 1980s, the site of the former hotel became Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Source: "Portland Hotel" by Leland Roth, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/portland_hotel/

Extent

1 Cubic Feet (2 document cases, 1 volume in custom box)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Records of the company that built and owned the Portland Hotel in Portland, Oregon. The hotel operated from 1890 to the 1940s and was, for a time, the city's grandest. The collection includes minutes of board meetings, stock records, articles of incorporation, a color brochure from the 1890s, and a hotel register from 1890.