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Hotel Sterling

312 Park Central E., Springfield, MO
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Welcome to the Sansone, Springfield, Reames, Bowles, Sterling Hotel ... well OK, that's just a list of the names this once high end hotel operated under as a hotel from 1911 to the 1960s. More than 100 years later it still looks pretty much like it did the day it opened, but it has has been converted to residential lofts.

It was built and owned by J.T. Woodruff who immediately leased it to Charles Sansone, a Sicilian immigrant who operated a local restaurant, but had no experience running a hotel. Sansone's reputation as a restaurant operator must have been significant because they filled the 200 seat dining room to capacity with diners who held presold tickets for the very first dinner served on the day the hotel opened, January 10, 1911.

Apparently the Sansones were good business people because in 1922 they left to operate another Woodruff owned hotel, the much larger Colonial Hotel a few door east on the same block, where they stayed for another 20 years.

The next operator kept the Sansone name and ran the place until 1926. After which it changed hands and names several time over the next few years during the Great Depression until 1934 when it became the Hotel Sterling. By the the mid 1950s and into 1960s it was pretty much a residential hotel.

When the hotel first opened it had 50 rooms, 25 rooms had private bathrooms, six shared toilet/bathrooms served the other 25 rooms. All the rooms had telephones.

Beginning in the 1970s efforts started being made to renovate the building, which at one point was close to being demolished. That effort took 20 plus years thanks to a variety of circumstances. Fortunately the building survived and today is the last of the three higher end hotel building from the very early 1900s still standing in Springfield

Photo(s) 2016