The New Scott Hotel Building was built in 1912 by J. W. Crider by combining two lots bounded by the Sterling Furniture Company building on the west and Jefferson Street on the east. These lots were shown on the 1905 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of downtown, depicting three, one-story, likely wood, buildings on the site all facing Mill Street. One of them is hard against the furniture store and is labeled “carpets” and was probably used by Sterling Furniture. The other two are labeled “cabinet shop” and “sleeping room.” The sleeping room may have been what was described in a 1912 Polk County Observer article as the original “Hotel Scott” building, the “New Scott hotel” logically being its replacement on the site.
The style of the new building might best be described as a subdued version of the ornate Commercial Italianate façade motif popular in Dallas pre-1900. This building demonstrates several aspects of the basic Italianate style, but without much of the Victorian fussiness exhibited in other downtown buildings such as the Sterling Furniture Company building next door. In keeping with the Italianate tradition, the upper story of the building featured an overhanging roofline supported by sculpted corbels and tall, double hung windows with window caps. Both features are visible to this day in their original form.
The front of the first floor originally featured a long row of tall transom windows above remarkably large display windows. Also featured are three locally cast, elaborately styled, iron columns that segmented the facade of the building into four parts with only one recessed entrance and an external staircase up to the second floor. Save for the columns, the ornamentation seemed to be rather sparse.
In 1940, the first floor received what the Capitol Journal newspaper called a $3,000 remodel in conjunction with a change in tenants in the building. This was likely the occasion where the transom windows were removed from the façade and the commercial space was divided into four shops, each with its own recessed entrance. A subsequent remodel, probably c. 1970s, added the fashionable Roman brick fascia seen also on the theater building next door. This remodel essentially eliminated all traces of the building’s original style on the first floor, save for the staircase up to the second floor near the east end of the building.
The 1913 Sanborn map shows that the western half of the first floor of the building was used for “Furne” (furniture), surely associated with Sterling Furniture next door, and the second half was split evenly between a “Dining Rm” and “Hotel Off.” The photo of that era (see above) shows a big sign on the front of the building, “NEW SCOTT HOTEL,” so those latter two uses doubtless supported the hotel business.
Judging from multiple photos, by c. 1919, the hotel business had apparently converted to an apartment building as the sign in the same location as the original “NEW SCOTT” sign now read “IMPERIAL APARTMENTS” with a subtext, “Rooms for Transients.” In association with that conversion, at some point likely prior to 1919, the furniture store occupied the entire first floor of the building with the only connection to the apartments on the Mill Street side being a still existing staircase up to the second floor. The store, Sterling Furniture, owned by Erastus Vincent Dalton (always called “E.V.”), was sold to his son, Maurice (pronounced. “Morris”) in 1926 who continued in that location. In 1940 when it was moved to 519 Main Street and subsequently renamed the Dalton Furniture Company.
With the departure of Sterling Furniture and the subsequent remodeling of the first floor into four business locations, several businesses have set up shop in the New Scott building over the years, among the first being a state liquor store which arrived there at an uncertain date (either 1940 according to the Statesman or 1948 according to state records) and was at that location until 2007. Palmer’s Photography, a well-known local business, was at 504 Mill Street (later 186 Mill) from the 1960s until at least the 1980s.
KEY REFERENCES:
- Images of America, Dallas
- Library of Congress Sanborn Maps: https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/?q=dallas+oregon
- June 18, 1912 Polk County Observer Article, “Crider to Build New Block”
- December 3, 1940, Statesman Article, ref state liquor store moving to the building.