Hotel Valeria - The White Elephant 1893-1929

The Hotel Valeria was the dream of George Williams who planned to have direct steamer service from Chicago. The project was estimated to cost over $100,000 and when Williams abandoned it due to the nation’s 1893 financial crash, the enormous structure was roofless and unfinished.

In 1905, newspapers reported that Pentwater Township had won its case in U.S. Courts. Contractors sued the Township, which had invested $11,000 in the project but refused to pay an additional sum they had committed to complete the construction, which clearly never happened. The unfinished structure, now labeled by frustrated residents “the white elephant,” ended up in Township hands. Proposed uses by interested investors included a sanitarium, lodgings for traveling salesman, a college, a Wesleyan Methodist Association educational building and home for retired clergy, and the Muskegon Knitting Mills. They purchased the property to employ about 100 persons to manufacture goods sold by the Marshall Fields Company. Apparently, Muskegon had a labor shortage. The knitting mills project never got off the ground.

The Township donated it provisionally to F.O. Gardner and a number of different venues moved into the building. Gardner sold it in 1921 to John Littler who sold of portion of what was then called the Littler Block to George Birdsey. Birdsey owned the Janet theater across the street (now the Brown Bear). Now, he renovated a portion of the Valeria building into a 500-seat auditorium with a lighted lobby designed from the old tower.

May 27, 1926 was the grand opening of the “Tower Theatre.” This exciting event featured the Pentwater Concert Band, a three-act vaudeville show, dedication speeches, and a showing of the famous silent film, “The Klondyke.” It featured actor Thomas Meighan, and the film was accompanied by the Ludington-based Cozy Theatre Orchestra. At that time, the theater was described as the finest in Oceana County.

On June 1, 1927, Edward Duvall of Chicago bought the building, In 1928, the year George Birdsey was elected the welfare officer of the Pentwater American Legion, a fire destroyed the part of the old White Elephant that did NOT house the theatre. However, the next year, fire caught up with the theater.

On Sunday night, May 12, 1929, George Birdsee closed up the theatre and went home. At 4 am the next morning, a motorist driving through town, spotted flames coming from the building and notified the Schmiedt’s bakery staff, already at work across the street in the Gardner Building. It was too late for the Fire Department to save the building. Only the walls of old Valeria Hotel remained. After that, Birdsey used reclaimed Pentwater brick from the White Elephant to build what is known today as the Hancock Building. During the next year, in 1930, Birdsey opened the new Miracle Theater on the site funded by the subscriptions of various businesspeople in the village because of the perceived need for a theater in Pentwater.

See Hancock Building.

Sources:

“It’s White Elephant,” Grand Rapids Press 12/22/1896. “Pentwater’s Great White Elephant,” Grand Rapids Press 4/29/1905. “White Elephant to be Used,” Grand Rapids Press 9/24/1920. “White Elephant is sold,” Grand Rapids Press, 4/1/1921. “Pentwater will open Novel Picture House Grand Rapids Press 5/27, 1926. “Pentwater’s “White Elephant” Building sold to Chicagoan,” Grand Rapids Press 6/1/1927. “Costly Blaze at Pentwater, Grand Rapids Press 5/13/1929. “The Hotel Valeria/White Elephant,” Pentwater Historical Society Newsletter Fall 2018