The Sheriff Was Coming for Olympia’s Hotel. A New Company Rode In.
On the eve of a foreclosure auction, local investors incorporated a $130,000 company to buy the Hotel Olympia property and keep it out of the sheriff’s hands.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
For the purpose of saving the Olympia hotel property, which is to be sold tomorrow under the hammer of the sheriff, in front of the court house, at 2 o’clock, a new corporation under the name of the Hotel Olympia Company filed articles of incorporation yesterday. Its capital stock was fixed at $130,000. The incorporators are T. I. McKenney, G. A. Barnes, A. H. Chambers, B. C. Woodruff and J. F. Gowey. A board of twelve trustees is provided for, consisting of the incorporators and T. M. Reed, A. A. Phillips, Mrs. Mary A. Barnes, N. H. Owings, David J. Chambers, of Olympia, and B. Dodge, of Gate City. The mortgage is $47,000.
“For the purpose of saving the Olympia hotel property, which is to be sold tomorrow under the hammer of the sheriff…”
Foreclosure auctions and last-minute investor syndicates are familiar in Olympia’s real-estate market, where downtown property is always both a civic asset and a speculative one. The 1891 scramble shows how quickly a town’s landmark could become a line item in a mortgage.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.