Before the Civil War, Selma, Ala., was a bustling city of about 3,000 souls situated on the Alabama River. Like most towns in Alabama at the time, Selma’s economy was centered on growing, ginning and shipping cotton.

In 1860, city leaders created the Broad Street Hotel Co. to build a grand hotel to house cotton merchants who visited, according to the 1960 book “Alabama Hotels and Resorts” by James F. Sulzby. They determined it would be an architectural marvel.

A Feb. 28, 1860, edition of The Daily State Sentinel newspaper reported: “All concede the great necessity for a first-class hotel in Selma and if a proper effort is now made we will have one and its consequent benefits.”

Construction began later that year at the corner of Broad Street and Dallas Avenue. But, as war began in 1861, work on the hotel stalled. The people of Selma got busy producing munitions and iron-clad warships and construction of the partially built hotel was abandoned. Following the Battle of Selma, the building was used as headquarters for Union troops, according to the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Both Confederate and Union soldiers reportedly used the first floor as horse stalls on occasion, according to Sulzby’s book.

The hotel’s design

It wasn’t until 1867 that work resumed but even then only part of Hotel Albert was completed. The massive hotel, based on the design of Doge’s Palace in Venice, Italy, was easily recognizable from its bright-red brick façade. Like most buildings in Alabama at the time, it was constructed of hundreds of thousands of bricks made by enslaved people.

Until the 1890s, only the first two floors operated until, finally, the entire hotel was completed in 1893.

Designed by architect James. E. Sweet, the four-story Venetian Gothic hotel featured a skating rink, a bridal apartment, two parlors, retail space and guest rooms. The front was adorned with a Venetian arcade, a series of arches and colonnades used to create a covered walkway.

The hotel was named for Albert G. Parrish, a man active in procuring the money to purchase the property where the hotel was built, Sulzby wrote.

Pivotal events

The Hotel Albert would be the site of many interesting events, including a visit by Martin Luther King Jr., a devastating fire and an appearance in a movie.

In 1910, Hotel Albert had one of its biggest setbacks when the hotel caught fire.

“Selma’s beautiful Hotel Albert is greatly damaged by fire which was discovered in the east end of the South wing of the building at one o’clock this morning,” a reporter wrote in the Aug. 19, 1910, edition of The Selma Times-Journal. “The fire originated in a toilet on the fourth floor and the only solution as to is origin is that someone dropped a cigarette or lighted match and this started the most disastrous fire Selma has suffered in a long number of years.”

The blaze was contained mostly to the south wing but the damage was estimated at $20,000, or $637,000 in today’s money, according to news reports at the time.

Within two months, work began to repair the building. In addition, owners decided to do some upgrades and installed “a large number of bath rooms [sic],” according to a Nov. 18, 1910, article in the Selma Times-Journal.

In January of 1965, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. stayed at the hotel. An article in The Selma Times-Journal reminded readers that the hotel was built using the labor of enslaved people.

“A symbolic action came when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. several months ago took a room at the Hotel Albert in Selma, Ala.,” the article said.

According to Sarah DeRupo of Villanova University’s Falvey Library, “King chose to stay at the Hotel Albert because it had never had a Black hotel guest, despite segregation of public spaces like hotels being outlawed the previous year.”

He was attacked by a man named Jimmy Robinson trying to stop King’s demonstrations against segregation and voter discrimination while registering at the hotel counter, according to DeRupo. Villanova purchased an archive of receipts and other civil rights memorabilia in 2005.

The New York Times published a story about the incident under the headline “Dr. King punched and kicked at Alabama hotel” on Jan. 19, 1965.

In 1967, Hotel Albert and much of downtown Selma were used in filming “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” a film based on Carson McCullers’ novel of the same name.

Because many of the extras and the crew used in the film were Selma residents, the film’s producers held a local premiere at the Wilby Theatre in Selma in October 1968. Before the screening, local officials proclaimed “Carson McCullers” week and temporarily renamed Selma Avenue to Carson McCullers Avenue to celebrate the author. The Wilby burned in 1971.

According to the film’s listing on IMDb, Hotel Albert appears twice in the film, once when the character Singer (played by Alan Arkin) arrives in town and again when Singer and the character Antonapoulos (Chuck McCann) dine on the hotel’s terrace.

End of an era

Demolition of the Hotel Albert began in June 1968, despite efforts from some local citizens to save it. It was slowly dismantled over six months. Hotel details such as chandeliers, columns, stained-glass windows, stair rails and doors were salvaged, as well as many as half a million bricks that were used in other construction projects.

Four of its columns were installed in the Vaughan-Smitherman Museum, according to The Selma Times-Journal.