www.925-1000.com

A prior thread on R.Wallace for Hotel Pennsylvania shows part of the problems in identifying commercial silverware users when their are no date code symbols employed. For this next puzzle, there may be a solution which I will present later. To begin this, here is the nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places which was entered for the (1925-) Eugene Hotel in Oregon: https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset ... 01508_text

Of all the particulars, what is important is that it is always being referred to as Eugene Hotel and not Hotel Eugene. The original organization behind the project is also named Eugene Hotel Company, in that order. Next the photos.

Item: Two-handle, oval-form, low-pedestal, open sugar marked R. Wallace Silver Soldered and carrying pattern number 0381 and capacity indicator of 8 OZ.---a lid might be missing, but there is no inner lip on this style base.







One can note there is no presence if any sequential number stampings as are often found on hollowares from large commercial orders, nor any of the numbers or letters which are used to link bases to lids or inciate which item of the several in a tea or coffee service. (This could be important as it might suggest the items were simply ordered in batches of creamers or sugars which were not related to whole sets...).

Seems pretty straight forward, so what's the problem? The historic Smeede Hotel (another survivor) has ghost ads. on the side of the building indicating "fine dining"...and for several years beginning in the 1890's that small hostlery was named "Hotel Eugene". (Again, no date codes for Wallace items!!) Now we turn to photo evidence found in Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series of books on local history. Page 43 of "EUGENE" has a 1935 shot of the entryway with "Eugene hotel" signs in lettering using that small "h"...but above the doors is the 1925 original crest with a cursive-script-form monogram of entwisted E-upon-H....not exact match, but a clue. In the next photo below that, we see the coffee shop in 1949 (due to existing copyrights, I'll look for you).... and yiiikes!!....a couple of holloware pieces (barely noticeable) having the exact loop shapes of handles on this item, and little thumb tabs on top to boot. So, two bits of evidence to suggest that "Hotel Eugene" was the name inscribed on some wares rather than "Eugene Hotel", and the additional fact that known flatwares were marked with a script "E"....maybe not absolutely definitive, but pretty strong evidence supporting the latter institution. (Not noted in the wiki entries is the Animal House-Curtis Salgado-John Belushi-Blues Brothers historical fodder. I'll toss in National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live for the search engines to gobble up.)