Object of the Month – January 2012
Hart Hotel Vintage Postcard
The Hart Hotel (shown in this undated postcard) was located at 401 N. Commercial Street, near the Chicago and North Western Railway station. It, and others like it near the North Western and Soo Line depots as well as the hotels downtown, catered to the many traveling businessmen of the era.
But Neenah’s hotels also sought tourists as well as business travelers. Neenah’s most noted leisure hotel was the Roberts Resort, located at the east end of Doty Island. But other hotels also emphasized their recreational attributes, whether real or imagined. The Valley Inn touted it’s proximity to Lake Winnebago and claimed Shattuck Park as its boating and recreational facility. Even the Hart Hotel, among the city's more modest facilities, described itself as “Excellence without extravagance… In the heart of the beautiful Fox River Valley on Lake Winnebago, the fishing and hunting paradise of Wisconsin.”
The Hart Hotel was destroyed by fired in 1978.