If These Walls Could Talk: Patterson’s building housed the Dalton Hotel for over 50 years

Jul 15, 2023

Editor's note: This is part of a 15-story series titled "If These Walls Could Talk" completed by Pioneer reporters with help from the Beltrami County Historical Society for our 2023 Annual Report.

In February 1918, John A. Dalton announced he was going to build a handsome two-story building on one of the best commercial corners of the city. At the time, everyone referred to Third Street as “Main Street” because so many banks and most of the mercantile stores were located there.

Long before the streets had names, the southwest corner of Third Street and Beltrami Avenue was the site of George Carson’s Pioneer Store, but it was a wooden building that burned to the ground in 1916.

John A. Dalton had established the original Dalton Hotel in the building in 1906, so he already had a history on that corner. Despite bad luck with several fires and the worst one in December 1916, he was persistent about owning a hotel on the site.

Dalton’s new structure occupied the full length of the lot, was two stories high and had a full basement. It was built of handsome dark red brick and paneled on the Beltrami Avenue side. The building still has the name “Dalton” on a stone slab high on the north side.

ADVERTISEMENT

The front portion of the first floor was arranged specifically for occupancy by George T. Baker’s jewelry and music store. A large plate glass window set in copper faced the street.

The lobby for the hotel was on the main floor on the south end of the building at 215 Beltrami Avenue. Twenty-five rooms were on the second floor, each room having a window, while the hall had a window at each end.

Another fire broke out in the middle of the night on Nov. 1, 1920. Patrons of the Dalton Hotel made their exit from the second floor by climbing out the windows since the burning stairway blocked the only means of passage to the exit below. The quick work of the fire department held the fire down, and the loss was not as heavy as it might have been under more drastic circumstances.

If the walls could talk, they might answer the question of how Emma Davids died in 1906 – suicide or murder. They might describe how the proprietor, John Dalton, had knitted seven sweaters for the Red Cross during World War I.

The walls might also give the reader details about Dalton’s defense in 1918 when he was found guilty of having assaulted a waiter. Dalton said he discovered that his employee was bootlegging on the side at night, and when Dalton challenged him, there was a bit of a fisticuff incident. Dalton was found guilty of assault, but was he justified in his action?

The Bemidji Local of the Cooks’ and Waiters’ Union decided upon an eight-hour working day as the basis for wages, with time and a half for anything over eight hours in April 1920. A few heated discussions may have followed.

Rather than adopt the new eight-hour schedule, Dalton decided to close the restaurant and promptly stacked the tables and chairs in a corner of the dining room.

John A. Dalton died in January 1922, but the hotel continued for another 50 years. Adaptations were made. Rooms were changed, but residents continued to live on the second floor as was common in downtown Bemidji.

ADVERTISEMENT

Elizabeth Dalton sold the building to Abe Patterson for his men’s clothing store in January 1934. Major remodeling took place in the summer of 1947. The lobby of the Dalton Hotel was shortened, and a new entrance was constructed to enable the guests to reach the second story of the building.

This gave Patterson an additional 30 feet for the store. A balcony office was erected at the rear of the store, and modern dressing rooms were added. The new space in the basement was remodeled for a stock room.

Many men rented their tuxedos for prom and weddings from Patterson’s. Pendleton shirts were another staple of the store and many families relied on buying the husband or father a new Pendleton shirt for Christmas.

When Abe’s son, Ron Patterson, returned from the Korean War, he went to work in his father’s clothing store. As Abe worked less and less, Ron and his wife Ralyhe took over Patterson’s. Together, the two continued making the men’s clothing store a staple of the downtown shopping area.

Ron and Ralyhe’s son, Steve, came back to Bemidji in 1977, and he began working at the store with his wife, Sally — just like his dad and grandfather before him.

In April 2018, Steve and Sally’s daughter, Molly, and her husband Jeff Miller took over the business, becoming the fourth generation to run Patterson’s Clothing in downtown Bemidji, and they remain the current owners to this day.

ADVERTISEMENT