Several men, including three employees, wearing long aprons, pose, standing in front of the building. A dog lies on the sidewalk. Four women pose on the second-floor open balcony extending across the front. Two men sit atop a three horse-drawn carriage, with Villard House on the top, on the dirt road in front of the building. A man on horseback is nearby.
Does anyone know what it was? A hotel? Boarding house? There’s a train depot named after Villard, but that’s all I know about him.
According to old newspapers, this was a hotel. In 1888, rooms cost between $1.25 and $2.00 a day. Built by Robert Mottau and named for Henry Villard head of the Northern Pacific Railroad at one time. The building was demolished in 1923.
This interesting tidbit was shared by the Tacoma Daily Ledger on May 17, 1925:
In the 1980s, the Villard house, built by Robert Mottau, who is still living here, stood on A street just north of 8th. A few years after the building of this hotel, Henry Villard, the then head of the Northern Pacific, visited Tacoma. Mr. Mottau pushed through the crowd surrounding him and pointed out that he had built the hotel and named it Villard.”
I guess it was named after Villard as a super fan club in the 1880s?
In 1925 an 81 year old Mottau gave the 1st person following description of his time at the villard to the Daily Ledger:
“I used to run the Villard hotel in the early 70s. That was the finest hotel in Tacoma then. I was situated across the street from No. 6 fire house and 9th and A street. Many patrons were Easterns coming through this then rugged, wild country. They wanted trout, cutthroat trout, which they called brook trout.
Well, I always supplied what my patrons wanted, so I would jump into a rig, drive out to Clear Creek or Bummer’s Creek on the Tacoma-Puyallup highway or perhaps to Chambers Creek, Flett Creek, Muck Creek, and get all the fish I needed for the hotel.”