Here are just a handful of advertisements of Indianapolis hotels from the 1890s and 1900s. By this time, there were more than 40 hotels in the city.
By this time, the Enterprise Hotel, on Massachusetts Avenue, had ads oriented to boarders, and families. In the late 1800s, hotels were some of the earliest telephone customers. Ad years: 1891, 1892, 1899.
The Pyle House, 1890 and 1894
The Brunswick Hotel, 1891. The reference to the soldiers’ monument would have been one of the first.
The Capitol house, 1890. The fame of the Central Indiana natural gas boom was even used as a selling point.
The Grand Hotel, 1895.
One of the only hotels to advertise in the city directories of the 1900s, Smith’s was comprised of several businesses, all under the ownership of O.H. Smith. (1909)
