Groundsite Image Gallery
Free-State Hotel
Artist: Hughes, Langston
Height: 0.000"
Width: 0.000"
Free-State Hotel, 701 Massachusetts St., on the site of the present Eldridge Hotel (1913).
This is a vintage photograph of the hotel where Langston Hughes could have worked as a boy. It was built after the 1863 raid by William Quantrill. This hotel was torn down and replaced by the building that now houses the Eldridge Hotel.
In his autobiographical novel, Hughes describes brass spittoons of the hotel, and “At the rear of the lobby was the clerk’s desk, a case of cigars and cigarettes, a cooler for water, and the door to the men’s room.” Another contemporaneous photograph shows a cigar counter at the back of this hotel’s lobby. A women’s room is now at the back of the lobby.
The photograph was taken by Alfred Lawrence around 1895.