Imagine you need to fly across the States. Maybe you are going to see a sports event. Maybe your job requires it. Maybe you want to see a famous landmark. Either way, you have to plan for lodging. Today, that is easy. Just make reservations at a hotel. It wasn’t always like that however. Now imagine staying in a tavern. There’s only a few rooms, and a few beds. Maybe you will get your own room, but most likely you will share a room with a stranger, or possibly even a bed. Besides this, you have to listen to the drunken noise of the tavern’s patrons. Pretty bad, right? However, this would have been common before the advent of the hotel.

Travelers then did not like this situation any more than you would, and complained about it in their journals. As America grew in prosperity and expectations, the foundation of the hotel was set. Starting around the 1790s, entrepreneurs attempted to introduce a new concept: a building designed principally for lodging–the hotel. While still incorporating public spaces, most of this new building was dedicated to individual rooms for guests. To have space for all these rooms, hotels needed to be very large, expensive, and impressive buildings, unlike taverns. Few hotels were actually completed before the economic environment created by the War of 1812 stopped development. However, it wasn’t long after this until hotels rose to prominence.

Historian A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, in his book Hotel: An American History reveals that there were several reasons for the rise of the hotel in 19th century America. During this time period, due to the growing interconnectedness of the American economy to the world economy, there was a general trend towards improving American transportation infrastructure, and lodging the people who transported goods was part of this. Hotels were also intended–since they were such grand structures–to increase the value of nearby property and ennoble the pursuit of commerce in a nation of farmers. As time went on, and transportation improved, hotels became necessary for a more mobile population.

The arrangement of space in hotels is especially important, as public spaces could be separated to keep the social classes separate, while still allowing interaction with other hotel guests. Of course, private rooms were the driving factor of hotel success, and the best use of space was important to sell the most rooms to the most possible patrons. Also, maintaining good service was also important. Guests were more likely to return and recommend the hotel if they were treated well.

Before the turn of the century, hotels diversified in many ways. Eventually, there were hotels for the upper class, middle class, and lower class, each offering services and prices acceptable to their clientele. In Harrisonburg, the biggest and best of the hotels was the Kavanaugh, which historian John Wayland called a second-class hotel (in comparison to hotels across the nation). Hotels such as the Warren and American fall in a similar category, while the lower end of the spectrum included Harrisonburg’s several boarding houses. This diversification was not to last forever though. As more and more Americans could travel by car, hotels began to standardize and economize their accommodations. Also, the rise of the automobile forced hotel owners to add parking lots and services for cars. In Harrisonburg, the traditional downtown hotels that clustered on or near Court Square came under this pressure as well.  The Kavanaugh hotel added parking and a service garage in the 1920s.  But by the 1960s motels drew lodging to the lodging business to the periphery of Harrisonburg.  As they continued along this path, individual hotels died out and chain hotels proliferated, first to roadsides like Route 11, then to interstate off-ramps bringing American hotels to where they are today.

The future is always changing however. Just last year, Harrisonburg and JMU began developing plans to build a large conference hotel on Main Street.