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(Photograph by Paul J. Jakubovich, courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society)
Banquets and dances heralded the Hotel Northland’s grand opening in 1924. Nine stories tall, it boasted 260 rooms (before a 1947 addition gave it 105 more). This was Green Bay’s finest hostelry, the pride of Walter Schroeder, a hotel magnate whose other luxurious holdings included the Astor Hotel (MI134), the Schroeder Hotel (MI52), and the Wisconsin Hotel in Milwaukee.
The Northland’s crenellated parapets, stone quoins, and patterned brickwork gave it a vaguely Tudor flavor that found favor in the decade after World War I. Architects usually employed the style for houses, less often for public or commercial buildings like this one. The building has a tripartite elevation composed of a three-story base, five-stories of rooms above, and a tall attic area of round-arched windows. Although the street-level storefronts have been altered, brick pilasters still separate the original basket-handle-arched windows. While the tall entablature at the third story level gives a strong horizontal note, verticality prevails in the stocky crenellated towers at the corners of the hotel that project very slightly from the building’s body. The hotel has been converted into an apartment building.