The Indiana Hotel: the theatre's hotel, 1928–1971, and its second life

1928 — 2016

A hotel wrapped around a movie palace: The last of the downtown grand houses was built as half of an entertainment complex. Clyde Quimby's Emboyd Theatre opened on May 14, 1928, and with it, wrapped around the theatre's north and west sides at the southeast corner of Jefferson and Harrison — on land that had been Plymouth Congregational Church's — opened the Indiana Hotel, in May 1928. The genealogical society credits the design to Alvin M. Strauss; the Embassy Theatre Foundation's own history names A. M. Strauss and John Eberson as the complex's designers. It was a seven-story house: 250 rooms, in the Embassy Foundation's account (one theatre-organ society history says 150, and that figure circulates; the foundation's 250 is printed here as the house's own). Even its bedding was local — newspaper advertisements of May 13, 1928 stated that the hotel's box springs were made in Fort Wayne, probably by Wolf Bedding on Clinton Street.

In 1952 the theatre and hotel were sold to the Alliance Amusement Corporation, and the theatre took the name Embassy. The Indiana Hotel closed in 1971 — which is why, when the Anthony and the Keenan fell in 1974, the society's account could call the Indiana "the only historic hostelry left downtown": the building stood, empty, after its guests were gone. In 1975 the Embassy Theatre and Indiana Hotel were listed on the National Register of Historic Places (application dated September 5, 1975). Workmen dismantled the hotel's rooftop neon sign in October 1976 — fifteen-foot letters, 40 feet of sign, 130 feet above the Jefferson and Harrison intersection. A 1995 renovation carved out the majority of the hotel's rooms and floors to enlarge the theatre's stage. The hotel's second life came with the Embassy's $10 million renovation: four floors of the former hotel were converted to classrooms, rehearsal space, a rooftop garden, and a two-story ballroom, and in 2016 the previously closed hotel spaces reopened as part of the theatre complex — event rooms, not bedrooms. The Indiana survives; it simply sleeps no one.

Sources:

1. Embassy Theatre Foundation, "Our History" (fwembassytheatre.org) — the May 14, 1928 opening, the seven-story 250-room hotel, the 1952 sale, the 1971 closing, the 1975 National Register listing, and the 2016 renovation reopening the hotel spaces.
2. ACGSI, "Hotel Indiana" — the May 1928 opening, the Strauss attribution, the Plymouth Congregational site, the May 13, 1928 box-spring advertisements, and the October 1976 sign dismantling.
3. Hotel Online / Journal Gazette, September 7, 2013 — the $10 million renovation converting four hotel floors to classrooms, rehearsal space, rooftop garden, and ballroom.