Mount Vernon Grand Hotel

The Mount Vernon Grand Hotel opened in 2016. It was donated to Mount Vernon Nazarene University in 2016 by Karen Buchwald Wright of the Ariel Corporation, after she purchased it in a 2013 sheriff’s auction.

 

The hotel was modeled after the Curtis House (also known as the Curtis Inn or the Curtis Hotel), which was a 200 room family-run hotel built in 1876, that dominated the downtown skyline and was located on the same property. The Curtis House was erected by Henry B. Curtis, who was the president of the Knox County National Bank in the 1840s and mayor in 1836. The inn was built on Main street right on the square, located on the other side of the square from the bank. When downtown reorganized in 1905, the bank moved across the street from the inn.

 

Despite its convenient location, Curtis lived in famed local property Round Hill. The Inn was owned and operated by the Curtis family, who in 1894 hosted then-Ohio governor William McKinley during his reelection campaign. 

 

After being down and replaced with a motor-lodge in the 1970s, the Inn closed in October of 2012, due to code violations. It was sold a year later for $443,000, less than its appraised value. The Victorian architectural style of the Grand Hotel honors the building’s historical legacy in downtown Mount Vernon.