Hotel Harris
The snazzy ‘60s graphics surrounding a lower-cased hotel harris floating in isolated, midcentury Modern splendor was the final chapter for a stalwart hotel that had been in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, since 1844.
Starting out as the American House, the hotel was rebuilt in 1869. The left-side of the five-story part depicted on this postcard went up in 1904 and the right side replaced the older hotel in 1914. The lower three-story extension was completed in 1929. Those were good years for what was then the Park-American Hotel. It became the Hotel Harris in 1947 and despite the upscale Wedgewood Dining Room, the casual Cottage Inn and the loungey Cavalier Room, “Michigan’s Best for Food and Rest” was like so many other downtown hotels in the auto age, fading. The Harris closed and was demolished in 1968.