Related Records

1. Archival Society Calendar Collection - Lake House/Hotel Maudelton The Lake House, built in 1876, was located on the southeast corner of Liberty and Main (Division) Streets. From the widow's walk atop the 3-story building one could easily watch sailing vessels enter and leave the harbor. The hotel featured a beet garden, an ice cream parlor, and a wooden dance floor in a grove of small trees in the back. In 1903, owner John Krapp sold the establishment to Vermilion entepreneur and lumberman George Fischer. Mr. Fischer moved the builiding down the hill, added a basement and renamed the hotel after his children Maud and Elton. The building on the left is the Lake Shore Electric Interurbun Railway depot, built in 1902.

   VAC2014.01

   Record Type: Photo

   
2. Feiszli, Barbara West Collection - A color photograph of the building best known as the Maud-Elton Hotel building c. 1990. Once owned by American Legion Post #397 the post was house with their bar and restaurant on the upper floors. Various businesses rented the basement offices. This structure once occupied the southeast corner of Liberty and Division (now Main St.). It was called The Lake House and was built by a contractor named Maurice Diehl of Sandusky in 1876. In 1903 then owner John Krapp sold the establishment to Vermilion entrepreneur and lumberman George Fischer. Mr. Fischer moved the building down the hill, added a basement floor, spruced it up a bit (as seen in several photographs taken by Vermilion photographer and newspaper publisher/editor Pearl Roscoe), and renamed the it after his children Maud and Elton. Although times were changing - Vermilion’s place as a major shipbuilding and a shipping port was fast fading - the hotel continued to do well as a stopping place for persons interested in taking a holiday along the lake shore. The depot for the Lake Shore Electric interurban railway sat just across Exchange Street to the east providing potential vacationers with both attractive and convenient accommodations not to mention easy access to all area recreational facilities. But by the late 1930’s and early 1940’s as the popularity of personal transportation increased and the role of mass transportation such as the interurban electric trains disappeared, so to did the need for the old hotel decline. By the 1950’s the upper floors of the building were no longer in use, and had fallen into a state of total disrepair. And by the 1970’s the upper floor of the building was, for all intents and purposes, eradicated. Today the old hotel - one of the oldest public buildings in the city - is barely recognizable. It is but a shadow of its former self; its glory days confined to a worn out photograph of a yesteryear none can recall, and its future - uncertain. - by Rich Tarrant.

   VA2007.1.60

   Record Type: Photo

   
3. Feiszli, Barbara West Collection - A color photograph of the Cargo Warehouse (owned by the Buyer’s Fair) near the southeast corner of Liberty and Toledo Streets c 1990. Built in 1850 it was organically part of the Nicholas / George Fischer Lumber Company and sat along the eastern river bank just south of the Kishman Fish Company. It was later moved south - across the railroad tracks just south and to the east of the location in the photograph where it was used as a warehouse by Fischer Lumber. When a dispute between the lumber company over ownership of the land on which the building then sat took place in the early part of the 20th century George Fischer moved the building to the site in the picture. - by Rich Tarrant

   VA2007.1.57

   Record Type: Photo

   
4. Unknown Source - A black and white photograph of the Fischer Building as it was being constructed c. 1914. The building was built by Vermilion lumberman George Fischer. To make way for it the old Lake House / Maud-Elton Hotel that once occupied the southeast corner of Liberty and Division / Main Streets was moved eastward - down the hill - to the southwest corner of Liberty and Exchange streets. That move, it is said, didn't cause even one crack in a piece of plaster of the old hotel.

   VA2008.1.94

   Record Type: Photo