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Save the Park Hotel

The Park Home when it was a train station

 

In downtown Williamsport, the county seat of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, among new and emeging businesses and modern buildings, there remain the architectural memories of the glory days of long ago. The grand historic properties remaining in Lycoming County are a reminder of a heritage buoyed by the windfalls of Civil War-era lumber profits.

One fine example of an establishment from late 19th Century is the Park Hotel, The main hallway in the Park Homelocated at 800 West Fourth Street in Williamsport, a region popularly referred to as Millionaire's Row. This area was home to the lumber barons who made their expansive fortune in Williamsport and surrounding areas. While many historic structures have been sacrifices for newer structures, a number of the original homes from the lumber era still remain and have been restored.

The Park Hotel was the epitome of fine dining and exquisite accomodations in the mid to late 19th century and into the 20th century. Peter Herdic, founder of the Park Hotel, (formerly known as The Herdic House Hotel,) and an upstanding businessman in Lycoming County, granted the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad a plot of land behind the hotel on which to reroute the main line rail through Williamsport. Travelers, businessmen, and family would travel to Williamsport, experiencing the grandeur of the city's finest hotel- the Park Hotel. Fine dining, charming hospitality and carte blanche architecture were a few of the luxurious features that a patron of the Park Hotel could expect.

In 1939, the building was purchased by William Bud Stuart as a memorial to his mother, Laura V. Stuart, and became a rest Main Stairway in the Park Homehome for elderly women and remained so until October of 1997.

The blThe building previously known as the Park Hotel is the oldest free-standing rail hotel in existence in the United States today

 

If you would like to help Historic New Beginnings, Inc., save this historic structure from demolition, and return it to the Titantic of the Historic District of Williamsport, please contact with your donation, suggestions, and ideas at century@sunlink.net

 

The Park Home as it stands today.