The Monongahela Hotel (also known as the Towne House
apartments) located in Brownsville, PA, stands vacant between the First (Monongahela)
National Bank and the Second National Bank across from the Union Station. It is
one of the many buildings along ‘the Neck’ that have become decaying shells of
their former glory and are soon to be dismantled and razed.
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| The Towne House sign |
History of the Monongahela Hotel
The Monongahela Hotel originally started out as the
residential home of Samuel Krepps and built in 1832. It was located on the land
that was eventually to be the site of the First National Bank. Krepps was
offered a deal too good to decline and sold his house to a man named McCurdy,
who turned the home into a hotel in 1844 to accommodate the flood of visitors
to the bustling city of Brownsville. At first the business was prosperous –
until the new railroad lines began to take travelers off the National Road. No
longer able to keep the business afloat, McCurdy defaulted on his payments and
the Monongahela house would eventually be owned by another six different men,
the final owner being the son Samuel Krepps.
The Monongahela House was razed in 1911 and a new building
was built. This new Monongahela house was in operation until 1923, when it was
bought and became the Monongahela (First) National Bank in 1925, which then closed
in 1931 and later reopened in 1947 as the First National Bank. In the second
Monongahela House (now called the Monongahela Hotel) a men’s store occupied the
right and a bar occupied the left, until it was eventually closed by the
Prohibition. Hotel owner Samuel Leff was approached by the Monongahela National
Bank in 1923 with a proposal to buy the building; because business was doing
well and the new hotel was becoming too small to accommodate all of the
business, Leff sold the Hotel and began building the final version of the hotel
to the left of its previous location.
This new Monongahela hotel opened on March 15, 1925. The
hotel featured more than double the amount of rooms that it previously had and
even featured an annex, reachable only by an enclosed bridge, above the
Monongahela National Bank to house excess guests.
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| Enclosed Bridge |
This new hotel had five
ground floor entrances and was the home to other businesses. From the left they
were: the Hotel’s entrance with an outside stairwell leading to a basement
barbershop, the Hotel’s coffee shop, a tailor, a private bank, and a shoe
shine/repair. The new hotel also had a fireproof garage located behind the main
building.
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| Then, say about 1925 |
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| And now, 2012 |
An economic slump once again caused the hotel business to
sour and in 1930, the hotel changed hands again. The garage would be leased to
other businesses to bring in extra, much needed profit. In November of 1930,
the hotel was declared bankrupt. It was sold to new owners in 1931 and use of
the annex above the bank discontinued. The bank-side and hotel-side entrances
were sealed and the tunnel was slated to be removed –however the bridge is
still there today. The annex above the bank was eventually converted into
apartments.
The Monongahela Hotel was eventually purchased by the chain,
Earle Milner Hotels Corporation. It was later purchased by Frank Bock who
converted the rooms into apartments and renamed the building the Towne
House.
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| Entrance to coffee shop |
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The lobby of the former Monongahela Hotel (and later Towne House
apartments) |
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| In the lobby |
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| A closet in the hotel |
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| Check in window |
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| Coat area in lobby |
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| Burroughs Sensimatic accounting machine and player piano parts |
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| Part from the player piano |
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| Left behind, behind the check in counter of the hotel |
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| On the stairs to floor three... |
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| Down the hallway... |
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| A letter left behind |
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| Sign in the lobby |
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| Magazines and catalogs left in a room |
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| An apartment room |
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| Bedroom of apartment |
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| Checkers, anyone? |
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| Rooftop of the hotel, looking across Brownsville |
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| Behind Hotel |
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| Roof top access |
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| Walkway to bank. Top floors of bank served as additional rooms |
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| Looking down the alley between the hotel and the bank |
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Rear view of the Monongahela Hotel on right and the
First National Bank on the left |
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| Coffee shop window. Reflection of the Flatiron building can be seen. One of the few active buildings in town now. |
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| On the side of the Second National bank |
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| Union Station from last weeks blog, in back ground. |
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| Ghost sign for the old Monongahela Hotel can be seen on the red bricks, up high |
