This historic building was built in the late 1800s as a hotel. Since that time it was converted to a boarding home. It has a large kitchen, laundry room, dining room, seven+- bedrooms, and several bathrooms on the main level. Upstairs you will find a manager's apartment with four bedrooms and two baths on one side of the building and more bedrooms and bathrooms for customers on the other. Historical Information COMMERCIAL HOTEL W.P. and Amy Loucks opened the "Commercial Hotel" on that lot in late 1883. We believe that the original hotel was the section facing Lakin Street where the kitchen is. In Aug. of 1885, Loucks built an addition - supposedly 24X28 feet and two stories high. That would be the area where the dining room and staircase are. In 1905, the property was sold to Sam Graham and John Harrigan, but they had it for less than a year before selling to H.H. Tipton in November of 1906. THE COLONIAL In March of 1908, a newspaper article talks about H.H. Tipton redoing the old commercial hotel and that the old hotel had been cut in two, and part moved out onto the street. A basement was put in and foundation was put down. We think the part of the building that had been moved into the street was the 1885 addition (dining room) and it was placed onto the new foundation and the structure was added to on the east side. This was when the exterior was changed to the concrete blocks. H.H. Tipton re-opened the hotel in Sept. 1908 with a new name, "The Colonial". The newspaper article said it had 20 rooms. (not sure if that means 20 guest rooms or just 20 rooms total.) The property remained in the Tipton family until 1946 and also served as a residence. We are unsure whether it remained a hotel during the entire time. DOWD HOTEL E.M. Dowd and his wife Goldie purchased it in '46. Dowd remodeled the hotel and opened it in April of 1947 as the "Dowd Hotel." Their son Ralph became owner in 1949. By 1953, E.M. and Ralph were living in Garden City, but Ralph still owned it. By the time he sold it, it had been turned into a 4-apartment complex. PIONEER HOME Guy and Ethel McCombs purchased it in 1959 and immediately began remodeling it into a nursing home that would have eight private patient rooms on the first floor and 22 patient beds. They had an open house for "Pioneer Home" in October of 1959. After Guy's death, Ron and Linda McCombs bought out Ron's siblings shares and continued running it as Pioneer Home until 2010 when it was bought by Julie Tubbs and turned into Shank Home. Ron and Linda remodeled and made their home in the upstairs apartment. The roof was put on about 1985-1986 by Lianro Construction out of Garden City.
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