On Park Avenue, near the library, lies the old Smith Home, a building at one point that was owned, lived in, and run by James Lewis Smith, who purchased the property in 1889.
He was an industrious man was known for his generosity, and care of the community. Mr. Smith was president of the committee that erected the monument for the unrecognized dead of the Bridge Disaster, which sits in Chestnut Grove Cemetery; donated the land for which our current hospital sits on, funded and erected the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument on the corner of Main Avenue and West 44th, donated the land for which the First United Methodist Church sits, which was at one timed named for his grandfather, Reverend Gilmore, and his mother, Mary, and designated the land which is now known as Smith Field be used as a free to use public park.
The rest of the building was built on from the original home and was named the Hotel James. It remained that way for years. In Smith’s will, he gave a bulk of his estate to building or furnishing a home for aged women in honor of his mother, who he loved dearly, which the rest of the building was turned into once he passed in 1919.
For decades, the Smith Home for Aged Women was ran by, and funded by the Smith Estate until the 1980s. It was vacant until 1992, when it became the Park Haven Nursing Home. It became defunct due to a fire in 2012. It now sits abandoned, waiting and hoping for someone to restore it back to its former glory, or use the old building once again.
A poem was written about the building, when it was the Hotel James:
A traveler sits in a railway car, sad eyed and hungry, gazing afar;
Sighs as he thinks of the coming night, until of a sudden, he catches of the sight; of gleaming steeples and chimney's high- 'ASHTABULA' is the brakeman's cry.
Joy beams in his face as he clutches his grip and springs to the platform 'I'm lucky this trip, I'll feast in acadia'
He gaily exclaims 'Take me at once to the Hotel James!'
To the hotel James, that's the paradise found. With its viands choice, its ices and creams, its beds of comfort, where pleasantest dreams are sure to visit; where always is found the kindest attention, the whole year round,
From landlord to porter- Oh! Fairest of names to a travelers ear is the Hotel James.'