Editor’s Note: This story was published in 2021.
PARK TWP. — Before it was Black Lake Boardwalk, before Holland State Park and Ottawa Beach Marina — even before Ottawa Beach Road — the westernmost plot of land along the north side of Macatawa Bay held perhaps the grandest hotel in Holland history.
But it didn’t start out that way. In fact, the resort behemoth that became known as Ottawa Beach Hotel started its life several hundred feet up the dunes as the Hotel Ottawa.
Humble beginnings
“It was started by a group of Grand Rapids businessmen,” said Valerie van Heest, a local historian and museum exhibit designer who learned about the hotel while compiling information for a four-sided kiosk placed near the original site.
“The attraction of Lake Michigan was the cool breeze, and the businessmen in the hot city wanted to enjoy the water.”
These men formed the West Michigan Park Association in the 1880s and began searching for property near Lake Macatawa — then known as Black Lake.
“Initially, they wanted the south side of Black Lake,” van Heest said. “But that property had already been taken. So, they bought a large parcel on the north side and began to plan a community with frontage on Lake Michigan and Black Lake.”
But the WMPA wanted more than a cottage community. The group also set aside land for “the enjoyment of everybody.” One of the parcels, including land that now holds Black Lake Boardwalk and Holland State Park, was designated for a public hotel.
“They wanted to share the wonderful sights they’d found with other people and create revenue to support the neighborhood,” van Heest said.
The Hotel Ottawa was completed in the summer of 1886 for $20,000 after a single month of work by contractors from Grand Rapids. The original two-story hotel had an observation deck, 36 guest rooms, gas lighting and running water. The first floor held offices, a dining room, a kitchen and bathrooms, while the second floor held the guest rooms and a “ladies parlor.”
The name of the hotel — chosen in honor of the Indigenous peoples who first populated the area — stuck. Today, the area is still referred to as Ottawa Beach.
‘Bigger than they ever imagined’
Guests were ferried to the hotel from the south side of Black Lake and downtown Holland.
“The interesting thing about its position is that it was seven miles from downtown,” van Heest said. “Can you imagine riding a horse for seven miles? We don’t think about that now. We just head down to the beach and we’re there in three minutes. But back then, they needed boats.”
In 1888, the top-floor observation deck was enclosed and converted to more guest rooms. By 1891, the hotel had become so popular an annex was constructed with 104 additional rooms for $15,000. It was connected to the main building with a covered walkway.
“The original hotel was sort of rustic Victorian,” van Heest said. “But the annex looked more like a Red Roof Inn. It was a long, slender, two-story building with a single straight corridor down the middle and rooms on either side. It didn’t cost as much as the main hotel, but guests would come to the main building to have their meals.”
The sheer popularity of the hotel encouraged the Chicago and West Michigan Railway to build a spur railroad line — located exactly where Ottawa Beach Road sits now. This greatly eased access to the hotel, but also eliminated the need for guests to visit for more than a weekend.
Soon after, the resort began having difficulty filling rooms during the week. The hotel was mortgaged in 1893 and, in 1895, Charles Heald — a member of the WMPA and general manager of the Chicago and West Michigan Railway — purchased the hotel on behalf of the railroad for $5,100.
“Now, you had the original hotel and this annex and an influx of people from Grand Rapids by train and even Chicago from the big steamboats coming into Holland,” van Heest said. “It was so much bigger than they (the WMPA) ever imagined.”
And it wasn’t just the hotel. By the mid 1890s, a bowling alley, restaurant and casino had sprung up along Black Lake to serve guests. Although titled a “casino,” the facility served as a gathering place for music, dancing and hotel events.
The glory years
In February 1896, contractors began removing entertainment buildings and filling in the marshy land along the Black Lake shoreline. This “manicured” piece of land was ideal for the relocation of the hotel, which had been poorly impacted by blowing sand from the dune on which it was built.
“This is something I dug deep to learn about,” van Heest said. “How does one relocate a hotel? All the history books make it sound matter-of-fact. But, according to the description, it was raised on jacks and a series of logs were placed under it. Then, they rolled it down the dune to the Black Lake waterfront.”
A concrete base was built for the relocated hotel, bringing its height to four stories. The annex, separated now from the main building, was connected by an elevated walkway over the railroad.
“When they relocated, they created a taller, more European roofline,” van Heest said. “It took on a much more luxurious appearance at that point. This is what I consider the third iteration of the hotel.”
But there was more to come. In 1900, the Chicago and West Michigan Railway merged with two other railroads. This new venture, known as the Pere Marquette Railroad, was headed by Heald.
By 1901, the hotel needed even more space to accommodate thousands of boat and train passengers flooding to the lakeshore. The original building, then renamed Ottawa Beach Hotel, was expanded to three times its original size for $76,000.
The expansion added more rooms, tennis courts, a billiard parlor and a nine-hole golf course. But even more exciting, an electric light plant was added.
“At the turn of the century, that must have been extraordinary,” van Heest said. “You can imagine how amazing it would’ve been to see that whole complex light up for the very first time. And this is when it entered its glory years.”
By 1913, the railroad suspended all service to Ottawa Beach and sold the hotel to then-manager J. Boyd Pantlind and his partners. As automobiles grew in popularity, Pantlind began construction of a concrete roadway where the railroad once sat. It was completed in 1919, and guests began to drive directly to the complex.
In 1923, ownership of the hotel shifted to a board of directors comprising 12 businessmen, including Pantlind’s son, Fred, and Lakewood Farm owner George Getz. Yet another round of improvements was planned for the 1,000-guest resort, including the addition of a dance hall.
And then, on a perfectly ordinary day in November, it all came to an abrupt end.
Watching it burn
It began, as far as anyone can tell, in the hotel’s barbershop.
Shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 6, 1923, Edwin Antisdel — a hotel clerk — passed the main building and saw “a burst of flames inside.” Antisdel called the nearby Murphy cottage, which belonged to the hotel’s custodian.
The Holland Fire Department was summoned and a hurriedly organized crew of volunteers, including a truckload of workers from Lakewood Farm, created a bucket brigade.
But it was too late. Within 10 minutes, the hotel was doomed.
“That’s where it all ended,” van Heest said. “The glory years were over.”
The following day’s edition of The Holland Sentinel recounted the event:
Despite valiant cohorts of a hundred volunteers aided by a crew of Holland firemen and members of the Coast Guard crew in the harbor, the fire quickly passed along a hall extending to the hotel annex.
Fred Pantlind theorized the fire may have been caused by defective wiring. But the devastation of the fire was a consequence of other hazards, including old shingles on the hotel’s roof — which were scheduled for replacement the following week — and an early draining of the complex’s water tank after custodian William Murphy left for a deer hunting trip.
The tank was designed to provide sufficient pressure to “send water to every part of the hotel grounds,” and likely would have saved the annex and some of the resort’s smaller buildings. The tank was not typically drained until freezing weather set in.
Still, officials considered it a miracle the cottages of Ottawa Beach survived.
“The Holland Fire Department did valiant work in saving the other buildings at Ottawa Beach,” The Sentinel read. “So effective was the work of the firefighters that even the pavilion, only a few paces away from the new addition, was saved — as was the dock building and the Murphy residence.”
Thousands of Holland residents watched the fire from both sides of Black Lake.
“It appeared as if every person in Holland who has a car was there,” The Sentinel read. “There are no statistics or even estimates as to how many cars went to the scene of the fire, but there has seldom been a Fourth of July or Venetian Night celebration when more automobiles were parked at the various resorts.”
Meanwhile, several spectators on the south side of Black Lake spotted a boathouse fire on their side of the water, caused by a blazing piece of debris that had been blown across the lake.
The group of men broke into nearby cottages to gather the supplies necessary to force open the door of the boathouse and fight the fire.
“It took more than an hour before it was certain that the boathouse would not be destroyed,” The Sentinel read. “If (the fire) had started in good earnest, there is little doubt that many cottages on the south side of the bay would have been destroyed.”
Small flames continued to plague the hotel site Wednesday, Nov. 7.
“All day long, there were still huge banks of fire gleaming from heaps of bricks and other debris,” The Sentinel read. “These flickered up now and again, when the breeze caught them … about all that remained standing was the tall chimney, the bake oven near it, and a few other odds and ends of masonry.”
By the end of November, front page coverage at The Sentinel had shifted to the construction of The Warm Friend Tavern on Eighth Street, and the reign of Ottawa Beach Hotel was over.
Shifting into legend
Why was the hotel never rebuilt? According to the board of directors, the project was deemed too expensive (valued at $750,000) for a seasonal venture. For a time, a community clubhouse was discussed — but the plan never came to fruition.
Years later, confusion over land-use rights and plot maintenance eventually led to the transformation of the western portion of the parcel into Holland State Park in 1928. The eastern portion along Lake Macatawa is now owned by Ottawa County, which established Black Lake Boardwalk in the hotel’s stead.
Even now, new discoveries are being made about Ottawa Beach Hotel. For decades, historians believed John Jacob Astor visited the complex — van Heest’s kiosk even notes it.
“There was a guest register the hotel had every year,” she said. “It was a big, leather-bound book and the guests all wrote their names. And in one of those registers, big as lights, there was the signature of John Jacob Astor from Boston.”
Astor was a famous multi-millionaire who died on the Titanic in 1912. But he wasn’t from Boston. And, in truth, he’d never been to Holland at all.
“The register was recently donated to the Pump House Museum,” van Heest said. “I looked at newspaper archives, and there was nothing about a visit from John Jacob Astor. And he was from New York. Why would he write Boston? And after even more research, we found he never signed his name the way it was signed in the register.”
Eventually, van Heest and other historians came to a new conclusion.
“It was a prank,” she said. “It was a guest having some fun. And, apparently, there were a lot of guests who wrote things like that. But the neat thing is, we realized people back then were really no different than people today.”
More information on the hotel can be found in the Pump House Museum at 2282 Ottawa Beach Road — the only remaining building from the complex. It was once an electric power plant, but was converted to a water pumping station in 1915.
The brick building has been saved and restored, and is now maintained by the Historic Ottawa Beach Society. It can be visited for free during the summer. Information can also be found at Holland Museum, 31 W. 10th St.
According to van Heest, those walking Black Lake Boardwalk should be able to see pieces of the hotel’s foundation in the water, and portions of the cement block on which the hotel’s annex was placed remain.
“But they won’t be there forever,” she said. “Each year, the stone crumbles and falls away.”
— Information and media for this article was compiled, in part, by Holland Museum, the Historic Ottawa Beach Society, the Ottawa County Parks and Recreation Commission, The Holland Sentinel Archives and Valerie van Heest. Contact local editor Cassandra Lybrink at clybrink@hollandsentinel.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: A century later, exploring the tragedy of Ottawa Beach Hotel
