I was just driving by here last week. It stands out in my memory because the building to the right of the hotel has a very fancy facade, but the rest of the building is a very plain brick box. My daughter thought it was a peculiar combination.

Columbus is nice like that though, lots of old buildings in and around downtown.

The view from almost the same perspective from September of 2006.

Certainly looks like the lady is looking for something.

I've stayed here, and the experience suggested a few reasons why most such hotels *have* been torn down. It's hard to make them work properly as hotels now.

When the building was constructed, hotel rooms didn't all have private baths, desks, two nightstands, easy chairs, giant TV armoires, and king-size beds. Add those things to this building's standard rooms and you have to sidle around the room, squeezing yourself past the furniture. (The bigger corner rooms, incidentally, are as ridiculously large as the standard ones are ridiculously tiny. Book one of those.)

When I was there, the lobby was lit with the original electric chandelier, i.e. 100 unfrosted light bulbs about 30 feet above the floor. This thing was a technical marvel in 1897, but the light it casts is like the light from 100 bare light bulbs 30 feet away. It's easy to forget when looking at long-exposure photos that to the people who inhabited these interiors at the time, these were likely all very dim and shadowy places when the sun was not shining.

Unflattering light or no, the lobby well worth a visit for Shorpy fans, as there is (or was, anyway) a collection of historical photos showing the differing appearance of the lobby over the years. Today's version is self-consciously "original" but with more comfortable furniture, but in the past they more or less took the approach of using the room as a setting for whatever decor happened to be in vogue at the time.

I worked in downtown Columbus for three years in the late '90s. My office was on Broad Street across from the original Wendy's, about four blocks from the old Great Southern. Columbus is a neat town. I miss it. One of the greatest public libraries in the US is there.

I guess this is Shorpy's way of saying Happy Columbus Day!

It's nice to see it here on Shorpy. Have any more?

This is the one hotel from the late 1800s they did not tear down. It is still in operation as a Westin hotel. The section of the building at the left with the fancier arch is the Southern Theater, which was recently renovated.

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There's another one of those Holly hydrants.