From the Director

On occasions when I show visitors through Vesterheim’s Main Building, I like to begin by telling them why it was built and what it was like. An issue of Vesterheim focusing on design offers a perfect opportunity to share this fascinating story again.

Travelers staying overnight in Decorah at one of our modern hotels have quite a different experience than those who did so in the 1870s, when the stately Arlington House, now our Main Building, first opened its doors. Even the way visitors get to Decorah has changed—from the railroad lines that connected the country then to the highways that do so today. Speculating that a railroad passenger depot would be constructed on the west end of Water Street, its builders created the luxury hotel at a cost of $15,800. An article in the Decorah Republican featured the Arlington House on its grand opening on February 1, 1877, and the reporter gave this room-by-room account:

Our guide first led us into the basement, down an outside stairway, on the west side of the house. Here we found a large room being fitted for a barbershop, in connection with two bath rooms. From here, we were conducted through a small hall to the laundry, which lies in the rear. Our guide led us upstairs, into the office, a room 23 X 18, on the west side, facing Water St. The office is fitted up in a style to correspond with the rest of the building, which is to say, it is commodious and tasty. From here, we were conducted into a room 16 X 20, adjoining the office on the rear, which is used as a reading room and is connected with the dining room by large folding doors, so that if occasion requires it, the doors can be thrown open, and the reading room converted into a dining hall.

The dining room extends across the entire building on the rear of the office and billiard hall, which occupy the two large rooms on the front of the building, and its dimension measures 18 X 43. The dining hall, as now arranged, easily

The Arlington House, circa 1880. Photo courtesy of the Winneshiek

County Historical Society. . . . The tables are dressed in the neatest linen and loaded with a choice comport of fruit. Each table is set with heavy silver table sets. Printed bills of fare, never before used in this city, have been introduced as part of the regime of the new hotel. . . .

accommodates 30 guests, and if necessity should compel it, could be made to accommodate even fifty at a single sitting, without undue crowding or inconvenience to guests. Still in the rear, connected with the dining hall, are the pastry and meat kitchens. . . . The tables are dressed in the neatest linen and loaded with a choice compote of fruit. Each table is set with heavy silver table sets. Printed bills of fare, never before used in this city, have been introduced as part of the regime of the new hotel. . . .

Our guide next led us from the dining room into a large hall separating the office from the billiard hall. A few steps brought us to the latter. It is a roomy hall, supplied with a bar and two billiard tables. . . .

We were next piloted up a stairway in the main hall, to the second floor. In the hall, on this floor, at the head of the stairs, we were greeted with the glow and genial warmth of a coal stove. Both the main halls on the first and second floors wear Brussels carpets. The hall on the second floor, with its Brussels carpet, easy chairs, sofa, and warm coal fire, is far more pleasant and inviting than the majority of hotel parlors. On the second floor, facing Water St., and opening into this hall, is respectively the parlor and the bridal chamber. . . .

The parlor is elegantly furnished, being carpeted with Brussels carpeting of the most approved pattern; piano; sofa, chairs, and easy chairs. . . . The bridal chamber, a twin room to the parlor, is even more elegantly fitted up. The bedroom set of three pieces cost the handsome sum of $250. . . .

The house contains twenty-eight sleeping apartments, several of them being double rooms…. The traveling public, patronizing the Arlington House, will be pleased with the general neatness the house wears and need suffer no apprehension from the nocturnal attacks of ‘bed bugs’.

Unfortunately for the Arlington House, the railroad depot on the west end of Water Street never materialized and the hotel only managed to operate for a few years. It was sold and mortgaged several times in the 1880s and served for a while as a dormitory for a preparatory school and for Luther College. It was transformed into the Lutheran Publishing House in 1890, and in 1931, after the publishing house moved to Minneapolis, Luther College acquired the building to house its extensive museum collection. The rest, as they say, is history. But for a few short years the Arlington House shone as the epitome of nineteenth-century style.