Coast Chronicles: Markham roared onto Coast 100 years ago

The human fly was missing from the grand re-opening of the Markham Hotel last month.

In fact, the human fly was missing in at least two other of the Gulfport hotel’s historical re-openings, all unplanned results of storms, financial challenges and changing American travel habits.

But a century ago, the human fly was there to celebrate the hotel’s first official opening in 1926.

Henry “D.D.” Roland, the Ohio daredevil who scaled New York skyscrapers and tall buildings everywhere, successfully climbed the outside of the Markham’s eight-stories without attached ropes or anything to brace his fall, if that should happen. It didn’t. He even did ledge balancing tricks with chairs after making it to the top of what was then the city’s tallest building.

Roland, of course, is just one small factoid in the Markham’s construction, purpose and long history of openings and closings.

Amazingly, the sturdy building – survivor of two catastrophic hurricanes that devastated downtown Gulfport – was built in 1926 in less than nine months. Crews worked day and night to break construction records, and the finances to pay for it was another miracle of timing and local input.

“Markham To Be Name of Gulfport’s New Palatial Million Dollar Hotel,” blared the banner announcement headline on April 17, 1926. The first piling was driven 38 days later on May 24, with the final stated cost of the building at $1.2 million, about $22.3 million today.

“Markham Hotel Opening Brilliant Event in Mississippi Coast History,” crowed another banner headline dated Feb. 1, 1927, one day after the grand opening party.

At the time, all the towns of the Mississippi Gulf Coast were on a roll, or perhaps “roar” is better.

Three other grand hotels, each with their own personalities, opened the same year as the Markham. The azalea-trailed Edgewater Gulf Hotel was located halfway between the buffer zone between Biloxi and Gulfport. The stately Pine Hills sat in the crook of the Bay of St. Louis. The Tivoli Hotel stood on Biloxi Beach as the region’s first apartment hotel.

The Markham was different, located in a bustling downtown and advertised as both a commercial and tourist hotel with stores on the first floor. It catered to visitors seeking pampering, but also to businessmen visiting the Coast to make money.

This was America’s Roaring ‘20s and this coastline was coming of age as a tourist destination.

Hotels bustled, both impressively large new ones and the revamped older ones like the Mexican Gulf, White House, Buena Vista and New Biloxi, just to name a few. Budget-minded ones also thrived.

The guests came to the Riviera of the South from far and near for great food, overly attentive staffs, music and dancing, scenic drives, fishing, golfing and sea bathing. And maybe, there might be a bit of backroom gambling and drinking. This was, after all, also the era of National Prohibition.

Little held the Coast back as a seawall was under construction, as well as automobile bridges across Biloxi Bay and Bay of St. Louis.

Seafood factories and lumber mills hummed. Trains brought wealthy visitors from Illinois, Ohio and parts North to soak up the year-round sunshine and the beauty of waterfront, oak-shaded towns quickly becoming cities. The region was recognized for its laid-back but prosperous attitude.

But in 1988, when I wrote a Gulf Coast Chronicles on the fate of the 1920s Grand Dames, only one was still checking in guests. That was the Tivoli, which was later torn down after Hurricane Katrina damage. Ironically, at the time of my 1988 writing, the Markam was remodeled, not as a hotel but into business offices for the renamed Security Building.

That is why we should be celebrating the new re-opening of the Markham as it returns to hotel status with some original décor and intentions restored.

Gone is the Edgewater, dynamited to make room for a shopping mall. Gone is the Pine Hills, bulldozed by Dupont to create a buffer zone for a chemical plant. Gone is the Buena Vista, now the site of the Biloxi stadium.

These sad endings are all the more reason to celebrate the new Markham, which staged another ribbon cutting this April. The cherished rooftop lounge and Crystal Ballroom are back in this 21st century re-imagining. Instead of the original 150 rooms for guests, there are now 115. The furnishings are modern and you won’t be waited on by the porters dressed in their classic green and white uniforms.

But you will know this is a building with history.

The Markam is a product of the faith of the Coast people, especially Gulfportians, a few New Orleanians and Illinoisans. It wasn’t paid for by some big developer who saw potential, but by more than 100 men and women who formed the Gulport Hotel Corp just to build a downtown commercial/tourist hotel.

They each bought securities in the corporation, found a bond company from upstate, and within a month had pounded in the first 25-foot wooden piling to support the building. This was a remarkable feat for a city incorporated less than three decades.

The Protestant ethos of most of Gulfport’s early residents contracted with the mostly Catholic mindset of earlier Coast settlements, especially hard-working but laissez-faire Biloxians.

“Staid, conservative Gulfport, commercial and professional to its heart’s core, never saw anything like it,” the Herald reporter observed about the opening night party of dancing, food, even girls smoking cigarette. They were dressed to the nines, Roaring ‘20s-style.

“It started with a rush. While the guests still thronged the lobby and the stairways and the mezzanine floor, the orchestra swung in the the stately cadences of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’.”

The Roosevelt Hotel orchestra from New Orleans played ‘Moonlight on the Ganges” and “Tonight You Belong to Me” as Gulfport, definitely not a party city by reputation, partied through the night.

“They danced and danced, in dining hall and lounge, weaving and interweaving, dodging, bumping, treading on toes, laughing, swapping headgear, swapping partners, sometimes faster than the eye could catch the change – merrier until ‘merriment ceased to describe the infectious hilarity that made the whole great throng of a crowd of little children, playing a game.”

“The usual speeches, accolades and grandstanding that accompany such openings were rare,” commented the reporter. “The edict of the Markam’s management, that speechmakers would be knocked in the head, apparently was heeded.”

The Markham was named after Charles H. Markham, president and chairman of the board for Illinois Central Railroad. Markham was a frequent visitor to Coast as it grew in the early 20th Century, depending more on railroads to ship out Coast products and to ship in export goods for the port.

His local association explains why party guests included representatives from all the country’s major railroad. They hobnobbed with cold-weather folks from Illinois, Ohio and other parts North who wanted to check out the Coast’s temperate climate. New Orleanians attended because this was already their playground.

About 800 partiers bought $10 tickets to the night’s festivities.

The date was Jan. 31, 1927, and no one could guess that the hotel, indeed most of the people there, would soon face the financial woes of Great Depression launched on Oct. 28, 1929. In fact, the Gulfport Hotel Corp. was forced into receivership before the Depression ended.

Through thick and thin, this centenarian has proven to be a survivor.

Kat Bergeron, an award-winning veteran reporter and feature writer who specializes in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes this Gulf Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at:

BergeronKat@gmail.com

Or, at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923