PlacesPages: Historic Downtown Salem #3: Salem Conference Center (Marion Hotel site)

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Historic Downtown Salem #3: Salem Conference Center (Marion Hotel site)

200 Commercial Street SE

Salem Conference Center on September 9, 2006

The Salem Conference Center was built at a cost of $32 million and opened in March 2005. It features 29,400 square feet of meeting space and sits just outside the Historic District. It is owned by the Phoenix Grand Hotel, which was built at the same time and occupies the other half of the block. The Salem Conference Center sits on the site of the historic Marion Hotel and the Capitol Brewery.

Salem's largest hotel opened as the Chemeketa House on December 26, 1870. At the time it was the largest hotel in Oregon and was considered the finest hotel north of San Francisco. The hotel was a four-story building with a mansard roof, containing 125 rooms and 34 suites. The name of the hotel changed to the Willamette Hotel in 1890, and again to the Marion Hotel in 1910. By the 1920s, the hotel had been extensively renovated: the mansard roof was replaced with a flat one, with the fourth floor receiving more traditional walls and windows. The ground floors storefronts were also changed with much larger windows, and a fire escape was added to the front of the building.

While the hotel occupied the southern end of the block, the rest of the block was occupied by the Capitol Brewery. The Capitol Brewery was first built in the middle of the block in the 1880s, and expanded over the years. In 1899, the business was sold to the Salem Brewery Association. Salem went dry in 1913, but after the repeal of prohibition the brewery opened again. In 1943, the Brewery became the Sick's Brewing Company, which operated until 1953. The brewery was demolished in 1955.

Additional Links:
Illustrated History of the Salem Brewery Association at BreweryGems.com

Historical Photos:
Capitol Brewery (Oregon State Library)
Capitol Brewery, 1898 (Salem Public Library)
Salem Brewery, 1910 (Salem Public Library)
Salem Brewery, 1943 (Salem Public Library)
Salem Brewery, 1943 (Salem Public Library)
Sick's Brewery, 1943 (Salem Public Library)
Sick's Brewery, circa 1953 (Salem Public Library)

After the brewery was demolished, the hotel built an addition on part of the brewery site, giving it a total of 225 rooms, 100 of which were in the old section. On November 12, 1971, a fire started in the Marion Hotel in the ceiling of the main floor kitchen. An estimated 175 firefighters, including all of Salem’s fire department plus some from Keizer and Marion County Fire District 1 fought the fire, which destroyed the Marion Hotel but did not claim any lives. Only about 75 of the hotel’s rooms were in use at the time of the fire. A new motel-like Marion Hotel and a Black Angus Restaurant were built on the site in 1973. These were demolished in 2004 for the construction of the Salem Conference Center and the Phoenix Grand Hotel.