Southern Hotel

601 E. North Main St.
Phone:

East < GO > West

The former Southern Hotel building has been heavily modified from it's original appearance, but at least it is still standing and used as an apartment building. The place must have been quite nice in 1948 to have attracted the famous movie star Bette Davis and her husband to stop in for a meal. Apparently she enjoyed the meal enough to order a second helping.

That was before they finished dinner and went outside at which point things quickly went downhill. A local photographer snapped a photo of Davis without permission and ended up in being chased on foot by Davis husband.

The mural on the Cuba Free Press building shows the hotel in it's former splendor. The car Davis and her husband were traveling in was a new Packard station wagon.

The local newspaper noted in the late summer of 1924 that Charles Scott from Steelville, MO would build a hotel in Cuba, this is it. When the hotel opened in 1925 it was reported to be one of the most modern hotels in that part of the state. The hotel quickly became one of the newest stops for the Old Trail Bus Line running from Steelville to St. Louis, MO.

In 1926 Mr. Scott sold the hotel to J. O. Butts of Bismark, MO. In 1931 Mr. Butts added eleven more rooms in a new two story section on the northeast corner of the hotel. Butts was still the proprietor in 1944 but sometime later a James. S. Jones became the proprietor, sadly Jones died of a heart attack in 1953 at the age of 35. I'm not sure of the hotel's use between then and now.

The porches on the front and side of the building are not original. Somewhere along the line the name of the hotel has been removed from near the top of the front of the building.

Photo(s): 2012, 2018