The old Gilmer Hotel Block downtown is one of Columbus’ most historic city blocks and traces the early history of the town. Its legal description is fitting, Block 1 North of Main Street. Though now mostly barren with just the old Elks Club, a vacant small brick commercial building, and the Trotter Convention Center parking lot, the block was once the center of life in early Columbus.
The first reference to the block was by Gideon Lincecum, who wrote that in 1819 he built the first wood-frame house in Columbus. Its location was on the Military Road on what became Block 1. In 1819 the only streets in the town were the original 1817 Military Road, which is now Second Avenue North, and the west end of Main Street. Block 1 was centered between these two streets.
In 1820, the post office at John Pitchlynn’s Plymouth Bluff residence was closed and on March 6 the Columbus Post Office was established. Lincecum was appointed postmaster, and by January 1821 his house served as the Columbus post office. Thomas Sampson also moved to Columbus by 1819 and was living in a “double cabin” on the west end of the block. On the east end of the block where the Gilmer Inn once stood, a hotel was opened about 1819, by Richard Barry.
Last week I provided Rev. George Shaeffer’s description of Columbus in 1822. He described the Gilmer block or Block 1 as, “On the north side of Main Street, west end there was a one story store kept by Capt. Kewen. The next building was a small retail whiskey shop; the next, Barry’s Tavern, a two story house of pretty large dimension, a frame but unfinished; it stood on the corner where the Gilmer Hotel is kept.”
The earliest Columbus map I have found is an 1820s map of the Gilmer block. It shows the Eagle Hotel on the southeast corner of the block and Capt. Kewen’s property on the west side. Interestingly, it also shows a 20-foot alley running east and west through the middle of the block. An 1839 city map again shows the Eagle Hotel on the southeast corner and adds the Bell Tavern about where the present Elks Club building now stands.
The stories out of the history of that block are fascinating. In 1839, The Columbus Democrat reported a C. White, of Russellville, Alabama, “was waylaid and shot dead” on the Military Road north of town. Citizens of the town “immediately assembled” at Bell & Conner’s tavern where a reward was raised for the capture of the murderer. Then two posses started off in pursuit.
In the Billups-Garth Archives at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library is an interesting document related to the Kewen property. It reflects commercial life in the then frontier town of Columbus. The document from 1829 concerns the purchase of hides (probably deer) from a Chickasaw by the name of Underwood.
Capt E. Kewin
There is due to the bearer Underwood a Chickasaw on account of hides 1.06 1/4
June 14, 1829
Tho. B. Mullen
Mullen was active in the Indian trade in northeast Mississippi and Kewin owned a store located near the present Elk’s Club building. The $1.6 1/4 due reflects the use of Spanish or Mexican silver coins for payment. In Spanish coins six and one-fourth cents is half a bit, which was called a “picayune.” A bit was 12 1/2 cents, making 2 bits 25 cents. The story of Block 1 is the story of life on the western frontier of the 1820s.
In 1837, McCluer and Humphries opened a clothing store two doors west of the Eagle Hotel. In November 1837, the Eagle published a newspaper notice. It used the headline “List of Runaways” with the image used in runaway slave notices. The notice was a list of names and residences of people who had taken “French leave” of the hotel without paying their bill. In 1839, the hotel advertised that the specialty of its table was oysters and that the Tuscaloosa and Pontotoc Stage Line office was located in the hotel.
By 1849, there were five buildings facing Main Street on the block. The Eagle Hotel remains on the east; going west from the hotel is the post office, Thompson’s, an unidentified building and W.H. Stevenson’s residence.
About 1860, John Gilmer began construction of a brick, four-story hotel at the former site of the Eagle Hotel. At the time of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, the hotel was still unfinished. The rooms had been framed in, but the walls were not finished or plastered.
After the Battle of Shiloh, about 3,500 wounded soldiers were sent to Columbus, which became a major hospital center for the Confederate Army. The Gilmer was converted into a military hospital and, although it was classified as 450 beds, it overflowed with about 800 sick or wounded soldiers after Shiloh.
After the war ended, the first three floors were completed, and it opened as the Gilmer House. In 1883, a Pascagoula newspaperman stayed at the Gilmer and wrote, “One of the finest hotels in the South — the Gilmer House. This hotel is well kept, is supplied with water, gas and all the modern improvements, and the tables are furnished with all the market affords — in a word, the proprietor knows how to run a hotel.”
The 1871 Columbus Bird’s-eye View of Block 1 North of Main shows the Gilmer Hotel at the top right and on the lower left is Taylor’s Wagon Shops, which by 1885 also included an ice plant.
In 1962, the stately old Gilmer Hotel was torn down and a then-fashionable (and now torn down) Downtowner Motor Inn was built on its site. That site has now been purchased and will soon be redeveloped, bringing life back to the historic block. On that historic block upon which houses, and commercial buildings have stood for 203 years only the now vacant Elks Club building gives any indication of the block’s former glory as a commercial and social center of town.
Rufus Ward is a local historian.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected]
