The Beckwith House

As Oshkosh rebuilt from the Great Fire of 1875, the new Beckwith House rose on the corner of North Main and Algoma. Originally rebuilt as a four-story building, The Beckwith House was one of the cornerstones of Oshkosh’s resurrected downtown.

The new hotel opened in 1876 and was touted as “the largest among the elegant structures of rebuilt Oshkosh.” It had 75 furnished sleeping rooms occupying the top three-stories of the building while commercial businesses, including the drug store of J. Bauman & Company and Black’s Barber Shop, inhabited the ground floor.

In the late afternoon of December 3^rd, 1880, a fire tore through the hotel. The Daily Northwestern noted, “The alarm of fire had hardly been passed along Main street [sic] a block, when the skylight area was blazing clear up through the roof, the smoke pouring out of the upper windows.” When the flames were finally extinguished, the hotel lay in smoldering ruins and three people had died.

The hotel was quickly replaced by the two-story building which still stands today.

Prior to the Beckwith House, The Empire House, built by James A Rea in 1867, stood on the corner of Algoma and N Main Street. In 1873, Rea sold the property to Samford Beckwith. That original hotel burned in the great fire of 1875. Beckwith rebuilt a grander hotel in 1876. The new Beckwith Hotel occupied the top three floors of the four-story building.

The blaze destroyed the hotel and killed three people. The fire began when a kerosene lamp exploded. A clerk and a traveling salesman attempted to bat our the flames but with no water available and the floor and tables soaked in kerosene from several other broken lanterns, the fire spread quickly

Oshkosh Public Museum . Accessed July 1st 2022. http://oshkosh.pastperfectonline.com/photo/E390AE3F-E403-453B-A0BF-316054962468.

Domer, Randy. It Seems Like Only Yesterday. Charleston , South Carolina. Palmetto Publishing, 2021.

Goc, Michael J. Oshkosh at 150. Friendship, WI. New Past Press Inc., 2003.

"Doom and Death." Oshkosh Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh ) December 4th 1880.