When the Marquis de Lafayette, the hero of the American Revolution, came to Mobile in 1825, he was entertained in a hotel on the southwest corner of North Royal and St. Michael streets. The building had served early Mobile as its principal hotel for several years.
The marquis was honored within its walls at a dinner and ball. Erwin Craighead, editor emeritus of the Mobile Register, wrote of a participant who reported, “some person played a joke on the assembly and shouted ‘fire’ through the building and the Marquis, frightened, jumped out a window on St. Michael Street.”
Craighead dated the original building to 1809 and identified “Louis Doumouy” as its builder. It is unclear what its name was in its early days, but by its 1831 purchase by wealthy merchant Jonathan Emanuel, it was the Lafayette House.
A newspaper ad from December of 1841 stated, “Lafayette House. The above hotel has been thoroughly and neatly repaired, and will be open tomorrow, under the management of its former proprietor, John O. Brackin.” Its address was given as “situated on Royal and St. Michael streets.”
A subsequent owner was William R. Hallett who would serve as president of the Bank of Mobile for 25 years. One news account termed that bank “the monster of many heads as it has withstood all revulsions and panics.”
Before entering the banking business, he had made a comfortable fortune as a cotton merchant and maintained an office in Liverpool. Hallett died in New York City in June of 1860. In his estate records is a lengthy inventory which lists numerous pieces of commercial and residential real estate and nearly 2,000 acres of land in both Alabama and Mississippi.
Among the property in Mobile: “Lafayette House, SWC Royal and St. Michael,” with an estate valuation of $12,000. Today that amount would be well over $450,000.
The Roper House
A widow, Caroline Montgomery Roper, was the last to run the property as a hotel. She renamed it Roper House. In 1868, a reporter in Pickens County advised his readers about the state of hotels when visiting Mobile. The notice failed to mention that Mrs. Roper and her late husband had once resided in Pickens County.
There were only two hotels worth visiting he explained, and one of them was the Roper House, “where amid the most exquisite neatness and elegant luxuriousness, a guest is made to feel at home. The proprietress of the Roper House preserves all the free and easy ways of her profession; is scrupulously attentive to her guests; and sets tables that are unparalleled in the city.”
He further described the bedding, carpets and everything about the hotel to be “bran splinter new, clean, tasty and neat.”
Four years later, Caroline Roper sold the building to the Mobile Register which had previously been operating on the southeast corner of the same intersection. The brick was eventually covered with stucco while the attic was replaced by a fourth floor covered by a flat roof.
From Newspaper to Cafe
The newspaper would operate on this site until 1930 when its owner moved the full operation to the corner of St. Joseph and St. Michael streets. By 1931, the ground floor had been converted to the Dixie Cafe, a restaurant owned by Paul Coumanis and Nick Patronis.
Mr. Coumanis joined forces with George Louis to open George’s Cafe Restaurant on the site by 1940. City directories consistently show that the upper floors remained vacant of tenants during these years.
A 1947 advertisement for the establishment advised prospective patrons that they would find “Drinks, Food, Smokes and all Popular Brands of Whiskies, Wine and Beer,” and that it was “Open All Night.” A fire destroyed the historic building in 1953, and the owners turned their talents to operating the Princess House on Government Street.
The next listing for this corner appeared in the 1955 city directory as “Mobile Parking Stations, Inc., Lot No. 27.” Nearly 70 years later, it is still a parking lot.
