"Historic Places at the Crossroads"

7th Annual Preservation Week 2005 Photo-Essay Competition

Third Place: Meredith Scalos, Taylor Co. Middle School

Title: Come one! Come All! The Merchants Hotel awaits you!

Let's step back into the 1910s when Main Street was a bustling center for the city of Campbellsville. The buildings were an important part of Main Street, and one of these astounding creations was the Merchant's Hotel. When you first look at the building, it is certainly an amazing site, different from the rest of Main Street with the Romanesque design tower at the top of the hotel. Just a step into this building gives you the miraculous sensation of just a portion of what this vintage building has to offer.

Back in the 1910s when the building was first built, there weren't many spots for people to stay at overnight. This was a problem, especially with the merchant era on the up rise. The 4000 square foot hotel was built by a corporation controlled by J. S. Breeding. The beautiful, three-story building contained thirty-two rooms with fourteen of them being bed and breakfast suites. Included in the hotel was a dignified and tasteful restaurant. The capacity of this restaurant was no more than one-hundred people with three separate areas that could hold about thirty-three to thirty-four people at a time. Another popular recreation spot was second floor parlor. For most of it's life the Merchant's Hotel was operated by a couple known as Uncle Walt and Aunt Mag Hoskins. By 1949 the Merchant's Hotel had seen the best of it's days as an establishment and became somewhat dilapidated from that point on.

The Merchant's Hotel may have been the best that Campbellsville had to offer back in the turn of the twentieth century, but the stunning building took a downhill turn after 1950. Though the roof and the exterior walls were in fair condition, the rest of the hotel was in very poor shape. If the Hotel was proposed to be used again for purposes, extreme renovations would have to occur before the building was safe to inhabit.

Once you imagine the first step into the Merchant's Hotel, the prime business in Campbellsville, you begin the chain of people that it takes to save this monument to our heritage. Team Taylor County of the Kentucky Renaissance club is already starting this chain reaction between individuals that work for the restoration of old buildings. The Merchant's Hotel is a unique place and should be refurbished so our descendents can see and admire the wonder of the turn of the twentieth century. What if one day that one step into the hotel turned into a cascade falling in the dark? Saving this monument to Taylor County is one thing we can do to help our Main Street become the center of our heritage that it used to be.

This essay and photograph(s) are the property of Preservation Kentucky, Inc. and Kentucky Heritage Council and that any use of the photo or essay must be approved by PK and KHC.