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1831–1836 · THE TAVERN RECORD
A road town is its taverns, and Howard's history keeps two of them: The Michigan Hotel stood at the southwest corner of Michigan and Washington streets — the corner where, eighty years later, the state would mark the crossing of the Lincoln and Dixie highways. It was erected by Peter Johnson, who came up from Logansport early in 1831, in the road-building season itself, ferrying the Tippecanoe and Yellow rivers on Indian canoes because the ice was rotten. The hotel was a two-story frame house; its main building survived its own demolition as a building — it was moved, and Howard records that it "may still be seen at 215 West Navarre." The hotel was licensed to William L. Earl in 1834. In 1835, when the United States land office opened at LaPorte, the Michigan Hotel did a thriving business — the land buyers' road ran past its door. In September term 1836 Earl took out a license for a second house, Earl's Tavern, a stand he erected himself. A second stand survives in the record by its afterlife: Lilly's Tavern was moved to Jefferson Street and used as a warehouse for the Studebaker Wagon Works — a wagon road's tavern ending as a wagon factory's storehouse, in the city the wagon factory made.
Sources:
- Timothy Edward Howard, History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), the tavern account — the Michigan Hotel at Michigan and Washington, Peter Johnson's 1831 arrival and building, the moved main building at 215 West Navarre, William L. Earl's 1834 license, the 1835 land-office trade, Earl's Tavern licensed at September term 1836, and Lilly's Tavern's removal to Jefferson Street as a Studebaker warehouse.