Franklin Hotel
Known Name(s)
Franklin Hotel
Address
US 50 6 blocks west of US 13 (501 West Main Street) Salisbury, MD
Establishment Type(s)
Hotel
Physical Status
Extant
Description
The Franklin Hotel is a two-story red brick building that stands at the corner of West Main and Lake streets on the west side of Salisbury’s business district. It has thirteen bays. The ground floor has two commercial spaces of three bays each at the west end of the building. The center bay is a recessed brick wall with clerestory lights above. The two east bays are associated with the adjoining commercial space. Each window has two or three large plate glass lights that are surmounted by a clerestory of individual rectangular lights. Each store front has 26 lights in the clerestory, which runs across the entire south façade, the canted entrance and the two bays on the east elevation, broken only by the walls that originally divided each commercial space. Each store front has a wood frame-glazed door that opens to the sidewalk. The building is clad in brick laid in common bond with the windows marked by rows of soldier and header courses. Above the store fronts is an area where shop signs are placed, and this area is defined by bricks laid in a pattern of soldier-header-common bond-header-common bond courses with the top area below the second story windows a projecting header row. The second story has thirteen bays with double hung 6-over-6 sash windows. A soldier course defines the tops of each window frame and above each window is an arched opening that has been filled with decorative images of Eastern Shore wildlife (crab, fish, turtle, duck, etc.). The building’s cornice projects beyond the front of the façade and is marked with corbeled dentils set on the brick’s edge or face. The east elevation has two plate glass windows and six bays with 6-over-6 windows and decorative panels above.
Detailed History
On the original alignment of US 50 through Salisbury. The hotel first appears in the 1956 edition and is the only business to advertise with a display ad. Melvin Hutt was the hotel's manager, and he was active in the National Hotel Association. The building opened in 1930 and was known as the Mainlake Building and its concrete sign with raised san serif lettering is set in the canted corner of the building at the east end in the second story. The 1931-1950 Sanborn Insurance Company Map P. 19 for Salisbury shows that there was a restaurant and four shop spaces in the ground floor with apartments above in the second floor as of 1950. Melvin E. Hutt and his wife Donzelle, opened the Franklin Hotel in 1955 according to the Afro-American articles from August 10, 1957 and August 23, 1958. All of the rooms were on the second floor, and the lobby in the southeast corner of the building. Hutt did not own the building, but managed the hotel while the Larmore Company owned the building.
