The Exchange Hotel in Sturgeon Bay

On August 7th, I was finally able to find out WHERE the old Exchange Hotel was located in Sturgeon Bay in the 1870-1880s.  Grandpa Bacon's son, Samuel was the proprietor of The Exchange Hotel.  I have seen his advertisements in the Door County Advocate and the Expositor while searching for newspaper vitals and stories but didn't know where it was.

So, I went back to my friends at Vital Records and the library for a bit more digging.  We found that it was actually 2 blocks from the library and 1 block from vital records on where Martin Park stand today.  After pulling maps and doing some configuring we found out that the street that it's on now was called other names back in 1870s.

You can see Martin Park and the Door County Library and Door County Clerk Office.
All the time I was searching for the hotel, I was only two blocks away on the corner of Oregon and 3rd.

Back in the day, the street corner would have been Pine and Main.
I wonder WHY they changed all the street names...

After Samuel Bacon died in June of 1888, the Exchange Hotel was purchased and turned in the Vendone Hotel and an addition was made to the building.  Cedar and Pine are the same street.

In about the 1920's the Vendone Hotel was purchased by a canning company that was a block down toward the dock for corporate offices until the time it was torn down and Martin Park was built on the grounds.

Google photo of the trees which was the entrance to the Exchange Hotel
and how close it is to the dock (now a bridge).
The blue building on the right was the cannery that bought the property after it became the Vendone.

Back in 1946 people remember the park having a fountain and bandstand.

Currently, Martin Park is used for performing arts and music.  But, the trees that are in the park, were probably planted by Samuel Bacon back in the day.  They are quite thick.  There is a rock with a placard on it about the Graham Family.  They had a shipping business back in the day, and so they probably sold part of their land to Samuel for his hotel.  I sat on this swing in the photo below and pondered that my Grandpa Bacon probably walked the same steps I walked today.

The rock with the Grahams Info and the sculpture is a time capsule to be opened in 2076.

Here are photos of where the hotel would have stood.  These two trees were the entrance to the Exchange Hotel.  And you can see how close it was to the docks.  Where the cars are in the photo below is the bridge over the channel.

I'm sure glad to get this history figured out.  I had always wondered where the Exchange Hotel was and what Sturgeon Bay looked like then and now!  So glad to learn these things.  And, this will be my final goodbye to Sturgeon Bay for this trip until we pull out and drive back through on way way to other unknown parts of Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.