| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Historic Preservation.
The west (left) wing of this L-plan building was constructed prior to 1892, at which time the building was already known as the Clements House hotel, Alfred Clements being the owner. In 1895, Clements added the wing to the right, giving the building its current form and appearance. Subsequently, the building was known as the Kimball Hotel and later, the Hotel Lodi, which it remains today.
A rare intact example of a turn-of-the-century hotel that catered to traveling salesmen and others of modest means, the Hotel Clements served passengers arriving on the Chicago and North Western Railway, whose tracks ran just a block away. At various times, the structure has housed a restaurant, a clock shop, and other retail concerns. It is now a bed-and-breakfast.
The folk Victorian structure typifies the era’s railroad hotels. A fishscale-shingled frieze and a bracketed front parapet, which rises above the roofline, cap the clapboard walls. Tall, narrow second-story windows periodically punctuate the horizontal line of the frieze, a rhythm echoed below by the multitude of narrow doorways that open onto the full-width porch. The hotel actually began as a structure half its present size. Alfred Clements commissioned the initial two-story building sometime before 1892; by 1898, he doubled the width of the facade and ran a porch across the front. Turned columns support the porch’s hipped roof and a restored spindle balustrade. |
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| Bibliographic References: | Lodi Valley News: 3/2/1895, p. 3; 3/12/1895, p. 3; 4/13/1895, p. 3; 4/20/1895, p. 3; 4/27/1895, p. 3; 5/25/1895, p. 3; 5/16/96, p. 3.
Lodi Enterprise: 1/4/1895, p. 1; 3/1/1895, p. 1; 4/12/1895, p. 1; 12/21/1900, p. 2/22/ 1901, p. 4; 4/05/1901, p. 4; 4/19/1901, p. 4; 8/16/1901, p. 4; 10/11/1901, p. 4; 11/15/1901, p. 4; 2/20/1903, p. 1.
City of Lodi tax rolls (1897-present).
Lodi Historical Album: 1848-1973. Lodi, 1973, p. 17.
Sanborn-Perris Fire insurance Maps. Lodi, Wisconsin, 1892, 1898, 1902, 1904, 1919, 1930.
Capital Times 11/20/1989.
Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. |
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