Newport Lions Club at the 35th anniversary celebration of the Hotel Viking. In the picture from Left to right: John Gallagher, Leonard J. Scalzi, General Manager, George Lawton and Albert Roach.
The History and Charm of The Hotel Viking
Built by the citizens of Newport in the 1920s to accommodate their guests and visitors, the Hotel Viking, “the people’s hotel,” will charm you with its mix of classic elegance and modern amenities, including the hotel’s latest addition, SpaTerre. The Hotel Viking, centrally located on historic Bellevue Avenue, has proudly hosted many famous guests including President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, as well as many entertainers, celebrities and military leaders.
The name of the Hotel Viking derives from the legendary lore of the Nordic Vikings who reportedly landed in Newport approximately 1000 A.D. Whether a newcomer or seasonal guest, the mystique and charm of Newport and the Hotel Viking will draw you back time and time again. Each visit is a new experience, a chance to savor the majestic beauty and precious moments spent on the magical island city of Newport.
The People’s Hotel on the Hill ...
Article As Seen In Newport Life Magazine 2004
Built as an investment in the community by residents of the community, the Hotel Viking was a harbinger of Newport’s 20th century recovery as a tourist and resort town.
Roughly 50 years before Newport, Rhode Island experienced its modern conversion to a tourist economy, the city took a step of extraordinary proportions in building one of its most recognized landmarks on Bellevue Avenue.
The venerable Hotel Viking, a shining five story brick testimony to the faith that people had in their city in the 1920s was initiated by community leaders and built with community investment. It became known as the peoples hotel because local investors bought the common stock that furnished the half million dollars needed to erect the magnet that would attract tourists to Newport at the dawn of the automobile age.
And did the city ever embrace the Viking… imagine modern Newport welcoming a new hotel with a parade fireworks a community inspection a gala dinner with music an dancing. They did all that and more in May of 1926 when the Viking opened.
This stately Georgian colonial with brick façade remains reminiscent of a bygone era when hotels were not just a place to lay your head for the night but an experience to be savored. Listed on the national register of historic places the hotel Viking represented hope for the future in 1926, not nostalgia for the past despite its architectural nod to Newport’s colonial history
The roaring twenties didn’t roar all the much in Newport at least not for the general economy. Five years before the great depression would envelop the country Newport found itself losing tourists to locations in Florida and elsewhere because cities were building hotels as Newport was losing many of its 19th century bellwethers.
By the early 1920s many of Newport’s grand wood frame hotels had disappeared either engulfed by fire or torn down because of disrepair. Through the 1920s the city struggled to keep one of its other great sources of income the naval training station which later became more prominent because of World War II. Still its economic future as always was in doubt. The world was changing rapidly even then with the automobile becoming a more convenient way to travel and Newport was essentially cut off form that as well. The vision of community leaders prominent businessmen such as dry goods merchant William M Leys and contractor James t O’Connell helped shape Newport’s tourism economy in the manner that allowed it to survive the depression and the war and to position it for a future that brought the Newport bridge in the 1960s and the charge of summer tourist brigades that have been the staple of the city’s economy since the mid 1970s. they along with dozens of other leaders including familiar Newport names such as William H Vanderbilt, packer braman, William Sheffield and Edward a Sherman formed the community hotel corporation. The chairman of the hotel campaign executive committee harry a Titus, typified the men who proposed this bold step.
The inheritor of his family 19th century furniture business Titus fit the oft used description of pillar of the community. Born in 1869 he went to Newport public schools and then to Harvard before returning to run the family business first on Thames Street and later on Pelham street. Over the years he served as president of the chamber of commerce (where the seeds for the hotel were sown) and the ymca and he was one the business leaders who lobbied to keep the naval training station. Twice a losing candidate for mayor his political skills appeared of less standing than his business acumen.
He and the others who proposed the new hotel realized that Newport’s to call their own. Its infamous skoal room was the place to meet naval officers and a rash of visiting celebrities from Vanderbilt and Astors to movie stars and political figures no the least of whom was john f Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline who stayed at Hammersmith farm in Newport. Americas favorite humorist will Rogers reportedly rejected an offer to stay at a friends mansion preferring Vikings comfortable confines on his visits to Newport.
According to Marlen Scalzi the Vikings current director of sales and marketing, many people met and married at the skoal room. And she would know as taking on her current role was a literal homecoming. She spent the first 17 years of her life as the resident Eloise at the hotel. Her father Leonard Scalzi came to the hotel Viking as general manager shortly after World War II. The family lived on the second floor of the main building and soon became entrenched not only in running the hotel but in the community as well.
Living in the hotel as grand as the Viking was indeed as wonderful as it sounds. Marlen was treated like royalty by the staff. She remembers being welcomed home from school by the hotel chef with a fresh roast beef sandwich. Her father had her practice her handwriting by preregistering guests and Marlen recalls grumbling about one of her chores bringing the room service trolley back to the kitchen each day.
As its original promoters understood the mere presence of the hotel Viking helped draw many events to Newport over the years and it was always a significant factor in defining the areas reputation for travelers and business people.
During the great depression weekend conventions enable the hotel to hold its own. In 1933 at the height of the depression the hotel still returned a dividend for stockholders and was one of only 13 hotels in the American hotels corporation chain to show a profit in 1930 the first year of the depression according to Eileen Warburton in her book, in living memory.