Talk:Merchant Hotel (Portland, Oregon)

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Merchant or Merchants

Resolved

The historic sites inventory form says "Merchants Hotel." In 1893, in his Illustrated History of the State of Oregon, H.K. Hines called it the "Merchant Hotel" in his brief biography of Eugene Stebinger. Stebinger's brother taught music at the hotel, but no record exists that he sold anything. Geirfuglasker (talk) 02:27, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The NRHP form for the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District, which I've now added as an inline ref, lists the property (on page 18) as the "Merchant Hotel", but the first sentence of the description reads, "The Merchant Hotel (sometimes referred to as the Merchant's Hotel) is ..." Adding to the confusion, the City of Portland's Historic Landmarks spreadsheet lists it as the "Merchants Hotel" (no apostrophe). SJ Morg (talk) 10:46, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From searches of The Oregonian via the Multnomah County Library and NewsBank, I found that during the decades when the building was in use as a conventional hotel (not a residential hotel), the city's largest newspaper most commonly referred to it as the "Merchants' Hotel", but sometimes (and not infrequently) omitted the apostrophe, and also occasionally referred to it as the "Merchant Hotel". Advertisements in the 1880s used "Merchant Hotel", and The Oregonian's different practice may be an indication that the editors deemed "Merchants' Hotel" to be more grammatically correct, or maybe "Merchants' Hotel" (with or without the apostrophe) was simply in more widespread use at that time (late 19th, early 20th century). In any case, it is clear that both "Merchant Hotel" and "Merchants' Hotel" have been common names for this building when it was actually serving as a hotel, even if the former is, apparently, the common name for the building in its post-1960s (post-restoration and conversion to non-hotel use) period. I have created a redirect for "Merchants' Hotel". SJ Morg (talk) 11:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]