Plaza Hotel | Trenton, Missouri
In 1928, a six-man hotel committee from the Trenton Commercial Club set out to replace the Trenton Hotel, which had served the city for 44 years.
Willis Alexander chaired the committee. He had been an executive officer of the Trenton Trust Company since the bank opened in 1915.
The other members represented businesses throughout Trenton: wholesale grocer Henry Heiman; general merchant and bank director Ott Stein; H. F. Hoffman of the Real Estate Investment Company; hardware and implement dealer Tom Witten; and Donald McVay, a lawyer, merchant and owner of the McVay Motor Company. McVay had recently helped organize the campaign that established Trenton Junior College.
Trenton was then a division point for three railroads. A Rock Island improvement project alone employed between 500 and 600 people from Trenton and the surrounding area.
Road travel was changing. U.S. Highway 65 was being paved north toward Iowa, and the state was planning Trenton’s first hard-surfaced connection to Kansas City. The proposed hotel included rooms where traveling salesmen could display merchandise, a writing room with long-distance telephones, dining and banquet space, apartments and a theater.
Other developers wanted Trenton to guarantee at least $200,000 in bonds for a project expected to cost approximately $300,000. Alexander’s committee spent months investigating the offers and negotiating privately. They wanted an arrangement that would not leave the city responsible for most of the cost. They eventually found Charles Sears.
Sears had grown up in Macon and earned a law degree from the University of Missouri, but he never practiced. He entered theater management instead and later owned an outdoor-advertising company in Kansas. His proposal combined the hotel with a modern theater. Before construction could begin, his group required $25,000 in local subscriptions.
Investments ranged from $50 to $500. By July 19, 1929, more than half of the required amount had been subscribed by a long list of local stockholders. Sears could later repurchase their shares, but the price would have to include interest. He remained financially involved in the hotel company until its sale to the Logsdon Hotel Company in 1969.
The old Trenton Hotel closed on July 21, 1929. Families living near downtown were asked to rent spare bedrooms to travelers while the Plaza was being built. Sears also offered after-school jobs to high school seniors clearing rubble from the site.
On October 25, 1929, the local newspaper reported that the new hotel was about one-third complete. The stock market had plunged the previous day on Black Thursday. By then, the old hotel was gone. Local money was committed, private homes were covering the shortage of rooms, and five stories of unfinished concrete stood at Main and Eighth. Crews kept working.
On November 18, crews completed the concrete roof over the theater. Once that part of the building was enclosed, workers could continue inside regardless of the weather. They installed the boiler and heating system, then carried the job through winter.
Sears had hoped to open the theater by January 1, but the date passed with the building unfinished. By January 16, crews had completed the interior partitions on the first two floors and were preparing to begin plastering. Beneath the theater, plumbers worked on the ballroom and dining area. By March 10, the projected opening had slipped to around May 1.
Local electricians working under Ernest Holloway raised the large red neon Plaza sign on April 12. The hotel still had no firm opening date, but Sears had already filled the available reservations through his theatrical and motion-picture contacts. During the final days of April, workers laid carpet, installed folding beds and fitted the apartment kitchenettes with combination stoves, refrigerators and cupboards.
The Plaza opened on May 13, 1930. More than 400 people arrived for a banquet planned for no more than 250. The $2.50 ticket included dinner and a showing of The Jazz Singer. Sears spoke alongside the mayor, local ministers and members of the original hotel committee. Local musicians performed, and students from the Trenton High School home-economics class served the meal.
