Category:American Hotel, Allentown, Pennsylvania

The site of the American Hotel had been used as a hotel since 1810, when the population of Allentown (then known as Northampton) was about 700. In that year, Abraham Gangawere built a two-story tavern on the northeastern corner of 6th and Hamilton Streets. Later, under the ownership of Charles Seagraves, one of the leading men of 19th-century Allentown, the inn was enlarged and renamed the Northampton Inn. In 1837, President Martin Van Buren had slept there. In 1839 the hotel was expanded. During the 1870s, the hotel was again expanded in size to five stories and known as the American Hotel. It was noted for its excellent cuisine and was used frequently by local salesmen and the traveling public and was considered the finest hotel in the city. The hotel eventually was expanded all the way along north Sixth Street to Court Street, with the Lyric Theater on the north side of Sixth and Court.

The Allentown streetcar system, built in the 1870s, had a stop in front of the hotel with a transfer point for horse-drawn stagecoaches for travel to towns in the local area. The stagecoach line, of which Seagraves was one of the owners, made its headquarters there.

With the building of the Hotel Allen on Center Square, the American was eclipsed in stature. By the end of World War I, the American had gone to seed since its heyday in the Nineteenth Century. Aaron Potruch purchased the hotel from George W. Seagreaves' estate for $500,000 in March 1925, and he first planned an office building to replace it. In October 1925, the hotel failed a building inspection, and as a result, it closed for business on 1 November.

Subsequently, the American Hotel was torn down. In its place, a new brick and steel hotel was erected, and the Americus Hotel opened at the same location in 1927.