Northwestern Hotel and the Pentwater Bank
The Northwestern Hotel, constructed in 1867, is the oldest wood frame building on Hancock and survived several devastating fires between 1880 and 1930. Located at the corner of Hancock and Second Street, the hotel was the idea of Walter Waldradth, one of the area’s earliest settlers. He built the hotel from timber harvested from land he homesteaded on the lakeshore about 4 miles south of Pentwater. The Waldraths then moved to a home in the village known as the “Buckeye Burr “ at First Street & Dover and their daughter Mary Adelaide married Civil War veteran William Solomon Dumont and moved to the house known as the Colonial at First Street and Carroll.
The Waldradths and the Dumonts managed the hotel together when a lodger passing through the village on November 11, 1871, stopped overnight at the Northwestern. Walter Waldradth called a doctor for the stranger who was gravely ill. It turned out he brought smallpox to the village. Waldradth, who took charge of the man’s care, also contracted smallpox and they both died along with Waldradth’s wife. Their daughter, Mary Adelaide, her husband and Walter’s partner, William Dumont, and their nine-month old daughter Lydia survived the smallpox outbreak but it killed at least 51 other village residents—no effective medical treatment existed at that time. The surviving baby Lydia later moved to Detroit with her husband Francis J. Diner and moved back to Pentwater in the early 1930s where she renovated the family home and played an active role in village life, becoming the first president of the Pentwater Garden Club.
One year after the smallpox outbreak, in 1872, the building was also home to the Pentwater Bank. In recent times, the shop located in that part of the building used the old bank safe as a fun way to showcase inventory.
An eary newspaper report described the Northwestern Hotel as one of the finest business blocks in Pentwater. The Colonial Revival-style structure exhibits a pleasing symmetry with evenly spaced bays delineated by the second-floor windows. The first floor multi-paned transoms are one of the building’s signature features, along with the large retail windows. By 1947, the building then known as the Dickie Building, was painted white, and was listed for $16,000 by the Shaw Agency, which had offices in the building. By at least 1952, a portion of the retail space was home to the Village Post Office which moved in 1954 to larger quarters. That year Mr. & Mrs. Dick Sickafus, owners of tourist cabins on Pentwater Lake, opened a floor covering store on the main level and the second floor was described by the Ludington Daily News as having attractive apartments. A number of lakeshore property owners made the apartments their winter residence at different times including Mrs. F.N. Staal and Mr. & Mrs. Harold Staal in 1948, and in 1955, Mr. & Mrs. George Daggett who reportedly moved there for the winter months from Camp Morrison on Bass Lake. For a time, in the 1950s, the building housed the Father Emmerich Memorial Library opened with a collection of about 150 books. For nearly 70 more years the building hosted a variety of retail operations from clothing to skateboards.
In 2023, building owners Laura and Dan Nugent are in the midst of a complete renovation of Hancock Street’s oldest wood-frame building. They opened newly designed retail shops on the main level in July and are completing an expansive and stylish living space redo on the second floor.
Sources: Mrs. Francis J. Diner is Honored at Dinner, Ludington Daily News, 2/7/1952. “Open House is Planned at Memorial Library, Ludington Daily News 7/22/1958. “Pentwater News Briefs,” Ludington Daily News 5/71956. Pentwater Floor Covering Ad, Ludington Daily News 4/29/1954. Pentwater Historical Home Tours edited by Amy VanderZwart, Pentwater Historical Museum 2017. “Pentwater Post Office to have New Quarters,” Ludington Daily News 12/9/1953.