Albemarle Hotel

The longer story.

Completed in 1923, the Albemarle Hotel offered sixty rooms, each with a telephone and at least a half bath, according to its historical marker. A ballroom, dining room and substantial lobby made it more than a place to sleep. Under owner W. C. Fitzgerald, it succeeded the older Central Hotel as a setting for civic clubs and social gatherings.

The marker records a change to boarding-house use in the 1960s and renovation into apartments in 2022. Those successive uses are part of the building’s history. They show how a structure associated with travel and public gatherings could remain in service as housing. The plaque’s historical room count describes the original hotel; it is not a count of present apartments.

Research: HMdb: marker photographs, transcription & location ↗

How to read this place.

Look for the relationship between public ground-floor rooms and the repeated upper-floor windows. The marker invites a comparison with the courthouse site, where an earlier hotel stood, and with the library, which once occupied space in Hotel Albemarle. This is a useful way to follow a town’s institutions as they moved between buildings. Current interiors and residential access should be arranged with the property operator.