City Apartment Building & Franco American Hotel

Photos Copyright Claudia East, 2008.

The Photo on the left is an apartment building owned by the City of Yreka, located just off the corner of North and Third Streets. (Close to the back of the Franco American Hotel) The photo on the right is the back of the current Franco American Hotel just around the back of the apartment house on the left.

So, what do these buildings have to do with each other? Well, they were once connected and part of the Franco American Hotel! The apartment building was once part of the kitchen and was connected to the Dining Room on the first floor, the second floor had hotel rooms. I am not exactly sure when this portion of the building was added to the Franco, but in Robert Noonan's book (thesis), Yreka's West Miner Street self-published in 1976 he reports that in 1899 the dining area was enlarged and a new two story brick dining room with additional suites of sleeping rooms upstairs. He also mentions in passing that this section of the building was "recently" (in 1976) moved northward and now serves as an apartment house. This section of the hotel, actually seems to appear on fire maps with rooms on the second floor in 1897. However, the plans may have been made and construction underway for a finish date of 1899.

It is interesting to note that in 1939 this area of the hotel still had rooms on the top floor, but the bottom floor was sectioned into two parts, one serving as a card room and the other as the Southern Pacific Stage for railroad passengers. The old dining room which actually is in the photo on the right, turned into a saloon.

If one looks carefully at the photo of the back of the old hotel, one can see that the bricks on the back of the building are of different construction, and are actually pulling away from the building. This is where the two buildings used to connect. When they moved the building they also turned it 90 degrees from this location as it originally was "in line" with the Franco American Dining Room.

Copyright: Claudia A. East, 2008.