The Way I See It: Wakefield hotel provided convenient lodging for people passing through
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There was a time not that long ago that if you had extended business in downtown Marietta, you had a convenient place to stay in the middle of Putnam Street. The Wakefield Hotel was once more than a crumbling mural, it was a vibrant business at the corner of Putnam and Third streets.
Before the Wakefield was at the intersection, travelers would stay at a boarding house operated by Katherine Louse Wakefleld Ward Dye. With her first husband, Capt. Augustus Ward, she had a son, Charles Ward in 1870 and a daughter Willa. When Ward died, she married her second husband, George Dye; they lived at the corner of Third and Putnam streets in a home named Dodge Cottage. At some point they began to use their home as a boarding house, catering to students from Marietta College a block away.
Charles Ward returned to Marietta around 1900 and worked with his mother to remove the old cottage and replace it with the three-story brick hotel that would occupy the spot for the next seven decades. In 1906, a night at the hotel would set you back just $1.50.
John McFarland purchased the hotel in 1921 and his family operated it for nearly half a century. The dining room was a popular spot for a meal, and the Marietta Kiwanis Club met there each Tuesday.
Actors and performers appearing at the two theaters in the same block, and the auditorium across Third Street, frequently stayed there. Gutzon Borglum and his crew of stone carvers stayed there in the late 1930s while they carved the Start Westward Memorial in Muskingum Park.
The Putnam Street hotel lacked parking, something that its main competitor, the Lafayette, had in abundance. The Lafayette's owner, S. Durwood Hoag had purchased and removed several buildings to make room for the cars of travelers. Surrounded by theaters, churches, and government buildings, this was not an option for the Wakefield.
The hotel suffered as times changed. The auditorium burned down in the 1930s. The theaters switched from live performances to movies, so actors no longer traveled to town. Later the railroad stopped bringing travelers to Marietta. The hotel closed in 1969 and it became the home of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity of Marietta College. The building was starting to show its age and once the college students left, its future was in doubt.
The Dime Bank had big plans for the space in the middle of town. They had plans to build a new bank at the corner. Just as the hotel was plagued by a lack of parking, so were the plans for a new bank. The bank was never constructed, and the street was left with its only blank spot. The spot later became a parking lot, which it remains today.
In 1998 the motel was born again in the form of a mural painted on the wall that it once shared with the theater next door. The mural featured the hotel as it appeared in the 1930s complete with a young man hawking The Marietta Times from the street corner. The mural was painted by local artist Geoff Schenkel on the exposed brick. The part of the wall that was shared by the hotel and the theater was built using brick intended for interior use. Those types of brick absorb water that when it freezes causes the surfaces of the brick to drop off. As the hotel fades from view a second time, the future of the mural remains in doubt.
Art Smith is online manager of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. He can be reached at asmith@newsandsentinel.com.