John Jacob Astor Hotel
The John Jacob Astor Hotel, originally known as the Hotel Astoria, is a historic former hotel building located in Astoria, Oregon, United States, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).[2] It is one of the tallest buildings on the Oregon Coast and is a "prominent landmark" in Astoria.[1] Constructed in 1922–23, the hotel opened in 1924 and initially was the city's social and business hub, but soon was beset with a variety of problems, and struggled financially for years. It was renamed the John Jacob Astor Hotel in 1951, but a decline in business continued, as did other problems. The building was condemned by the city for safety violations in 1968[3] and sat vacant for several years until 1984, when work to renovate it and convert it for apartments began. It reopened as an apartment building in 1986,[4] with the lowermost two floors reserved for commercial use. The building was listed on the NRHP in 1979.[2] The world's first cable television system was set up in 1948 using an antenna on the roof of the Hotel Astoria.[5]
Location
Design[edit]
The Hotel Astoria (later John Jacob Astor Hotel) was designed by architects Tourtellotte & Hummel, who were based in Portland from 1922 to 1930 and who, after the Astoria project, designed two other hotels that are now NRHP-listed: the Lithia Springs Hotel (Ashland, Oregon) and the Redwoods Hotel (Grants Pass, Oregon).[1] Constructed of reinforced concrete, the eight-story John Jacob Astor Hotel building features Gothic decorative elements. The seventh floor is decorated with several escutcheons, one every third window, and the window groups at the building's corners at this level are additionally topped by rounded arches "embellished with elaborate cartouches in cast stone".[1] Each group of three windows at the mezzanine level, or second floor, includes two Corinthian pilasters and is topped by a pointed arch and a frieze with three small shields above. The lobby is two stories high at its center and includes numerous Corinthian columns. It originally included a large fireplace and "an elegant wrought-iron chandelier with parchment shades over electric candles".[1]
Cable television birthplace[edit]
The former hotel has been called the "birthplace of cable television".[7] In 1948, the Hotel Astoria was the site of the "world's first cable television system",[5] invented by L. E. "Ed" Parsons, then owner of Astoria radio station KAST.[15] Ed Parsons set up the first U.S. cable television system to use coaxial cable and a community antenna to deliver TV signals to an area that otherwise would not have been able to receive broadcast TV signals. The first television station in the Pacific Northwest was inaugurated in November 1948 by Seattle radio station KRSC, now KING-TV. Astoria being about 125 miles (201 km) from Seattle, Parsons "was unable to get a picture in his apartment, even with a high antenna".[5] His apartment was located across the street from the eight-story Hotel Astoria, and with permission from the hotel's manager[5] he set up an antenna on the building's roof and ran coaxial cable from there to his apartment.[16] The set-up worked, and Parsons and his wife were the only people in Astoria able to view television, starting on Thanksgiving Day 1948. "Reception was not of a quality that would be saleable today," Parsons told The Oregonian in 1972, "but we received a picture and started attracting guests."[5] The couple quickly became overwhelmed by requests from friends and neighbors eager to pay them a visit to experience the new medium.[5][15][16] To appease them, Parsons laid a second cable to a TV set in the hotel's lobby, and by the end of December a nearby music store was the third hook-up. Parsons then began setting up cable television connections to area households, with 25 receiving the service by mid-March 1949 and 100 by July.[5] Some time later, Parsons moved his community antenna from the roof of the Hotel Astoria to a separate location elsewhere in town and also added a second antenna site.[15]