Lakeview Hotel
The Lakeview Hotel was a resort hotel constructed by the Elyton Land Company at Lakeview Park, the terminus and major attraction for its Highland Avenue Railroad on the slopes of Red Mountain in Birmingham's Southside.
The 60-foot by 250-foot wood-framed hotel opened on July 12, 1887 with a Mr H. S. Dawson as the first registered guest. In addition to its 72 guest rooms the hotel featured a spacious lobby and dining room, several parlours, a ball room and a billiard room. The hotel was furnished throughout with electric lighting and bells, and with steam heat.
Linscott and Davids took over as managers on April 1, 1888. An addition of sixty rooms was planned for that summer. The hotel managers also operated a number of small, ornate cottages that were constructed on the mountainside. On June 12, 1891 a hot air balloon being demonstrated by Charles Swinney landed on the roof of the hotel.
The hotel is said to have been visited by Presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison in November 1888 and April 1891, respectively, but there is no indication that either was an overnight guest in Lakeview.
With the end of summer, crowds thinned and the company was unable to continue operating the hotel. It closed on August 21, 1891 and Henry Caldwell invited Hawthorne College, a Baptist girl's school in Florence, Lauderdale County, to relocate and occupy the building. The faculty and most of the student body arrived at Union Station that fall and were said to have been greeted by a crowd of 10,000 well-wishers. The college was renamed the Southern Female University after J. B. Hawthorne resigned and was replaced by Henry Lamar. The school took delivery of twenty-one pianos from Florence on October 20, 1892.
The building burned to the ground on December 6, 1893. One student, Minnie Dean, lost her life when she entered the building to retrieve some of her belongings. The school re-opened in the former Anniston Inn in Anniston the next spring. Later renamed the Anniston College for Young Ladies, the school disbanded in 1909.
References
- North Alabama (Illustrated) (1888) Birmingham: Southern Commercial Publishing Co.
- Sulzby, James Frederick (1960) Historic Alabama Hotels and Resorts. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press ISBN 0817353097