In1874, Samuel W. Fordyce and other investors financed the construction of the town’s first luxury hotel, The Arlington, at the end of bathhouse row on Valley Street. For a time, fire threatened the Arlington Hotel, and the fire of 1878 burned everything from up to the Arlington Hotel to Malvern crossing.

Local hotel accommodations improved in 1893 when the rebuilt Arlington Hotel opened on March 25.  The Spanish Renaissance-style structure featured mosaic floors throughout the ground floor where offices, reading and writing rooms, barber shop, bowling alley, grand parlors, and billiard and bar areas were decorated with expensive furnishings.  The hotel featured steam-heat and had both electricity and gas for lighting.  Fireplaces were limited to the rotunda and grand parlors.  Passenger and baggage elevators were hydraulic.  “The plumbing,” Little reported, “is excellent, the closets throughout the house having mosaic floors, marble partitions, and exposed plumbing, and are ample in number for each portion of the building.”  Cost of construction and furnishings came to $400,000, plus $53,000 for the attached bathhouse with 40 tubs. Visitors, who preferred the luxury and comforts of a private bath to the inconvenience of going to the public bathhouses, could use the attached bathhouse with 40 tubs.

 

Bathhouse Row attracted big name entertainment and illegal gambling from the turn of the century to the1950s. Famous park visitors included Will Rogers, Helen Keller, Babe Ruth, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and Al Capone. Theodore Roosevelt, on his southern tour as President of the United States, stopped at Hot Springs.  Superintendent Myers escorted Roosevelt to the Arlington Hotel where he enjoyed a thermal bath and attended a reception.

Tipped-off that slot machines were in the Arlington Hotel rotunda, Interior ordered the superintendent to investigate. In June 1900, Martin Eisele reported that, indeed, he found two slot machines in the hotel’s rotunda and ordered their removal. He assured the department that there were no other slot machines or gambling devices in bathhouses on, or off the permanent reservation. However, even so, illegal gambling persisted until Governor Winthrop Rockefeller shut it down overnight in the late 1960s.

The Arlington Hotel is located north of the site of the first Arlington Hotel that was built in 1875. The current hotel dates to 1924 and offers bathing facilities to its guests.

Credits and Sources:

Cockrell, Ron. “The Hot Springs of Arkansas—America’s First National Park: Administrative History of Hot Springs National Park.” National Park Service. Accessed June 15, 2015.

Shugart, Sharon. “The Hot Springs of Arkansas Through The Years: A Chronology Of Events -Excerpts-.” Department of the Interior, 2004. http://www.nps.gov/hosp/learn/historyculture/upload/chronology.web.pdf. (accessed June 15, 2015).

“Bathhouses of Hot Springs.” National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov/hosp/learn/education/upload/NPS%20-%20Bathhouses%20of%20Hot%20Springs%209-13-06.pdf (accessed June 18, 2015).

Hunt, William J. Jr. “More Than Meets the Eye: The Archeology of Bathhouse Row, Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.” Lincoln, Nebraska: Midwest Archeology Center, 2008. http://www.nps.gov/mwac/publications/pdf/tech102.pdf (accessed June 18, 2015).

Quinn Evans Architects, Mundus Bishop Design, and Woolpert, Inc. Hot Springs National Park, Cultural Landscape Report and Environmental Assessment. National Park Service, 2010.