Human Remains Uncovered After Historic Hotel is Razed
by Michael Jervis, special to The Chronicle
DOWNTOWN, November 1st, 2020 — When the dust cleared after Saturday’s demolition of the 122-year-old Palmer Hotel, workers expected to find wood, concrete, and rebar. What they didn’t expect were human bones.
“Old buildings have secrets,” says Jamal Wright, foreman for TK&C Demolition, the company commissioned for the project. “But not usually like these.”
During the clean-up that followed the successful demolition of the two buildings — the older, twelve-story southern wing, and the more modern, ten-story northern — workers made the grisly discovery. “We’ve seen human remains, and other things that people might have hidden away decades ago,” Wright says. “But nothing like this.”
While medical examiners are still sifting through the wreckage, which has now been declared a crime scene and cordoned off, early estimates put the number of bones or bone fragments in the thousands. “It’s upsetting that this was discovered only after the demolition,” says Dr. Grey Franklin, professor of archeology at nearby Tech University. “It’s impossible to know which floor, or which room, this cache of remains came from.”
As of publication there have not been any positive identifications, but Dr. Franklin did say they appear to be from over “a wide range of years.”
The Palmer Hotel dates back to 1898, when local entrepreneur Jonathan Palmer was rumored to have won the building, set near the burgeoning city’s crossroads and then known as The Winthrop, in a poker bet. The four-story hotel soon became a top destination for tourists and investors seeking opportunity. The space was profitable enough that, in 1910, Palmer added eight more floors, and then, in 1929, an entire second ten-story tower on an adjacent plot of land.
In its prime, The Palmer’s grand ballroom played host to congressional banquets and proms, while in the 1950s and 60s, it became a hotspot for celebrity spotting — Cary Grant and James Deen were once guests. As investment departed downtown for the suburbs in the 70s and 80s, the hotel saw a drop-off in its clientele, and the glitz and glamor fell away.
Ownership stayed within the family for nearly a century, from Jonathan Palmer to his son Jack in 1953, to Jack’s daughter Jacqueline in 1965, to Jacqueline’s son Joseph in 1985. In 1994, Joseph sold the buildings to the investment group Latham Incorporated, who initially kept running it as a hotel.
“It was a fun, weird place,” says Connie Harley, a former desk clerk. “An old building like that had plenty of creaks in the night, and plenty of creeps too.”
It was also the site of a particularly ghastly homecoming. On October 31st, 2008, former owner Joseph Palmer returned as a guest, checked into a 10th story room in the southern tower, and fell out of the window to his death in the courtyard; tragically, his body struck and killed another guest on the ground. Authorities have since ruled the case as a suicide.
In late 2008, Latham Incorporated announced the hotel would be converted into condominiums, but that year’s economic turmoil halted those plans mid-renovation. The hotel remained vacant until New Year’s Day 2013, when the conglomerate secured financing to convert the buildings into luxury apartments to be rented under a new moniker, The Palmer Arms. Tenants began moving in, but the high price tag continuously kept the occupancy rate low.
In late 2019, an unusual seismic event shifted the buildings off their bases, and subsequent inspections by the city found them structurally compromised and uninhabitable. Residents were given a one-week notice to vacate, and, after months of closed-door debates, the company ultimately decided to raze the historic buildings, citing cost concerns. A last-minute effort by an advocacy group to list the buildings on the National Registry of Historic Places failed. (However, sources tell The Chronicle, not before the group broke into the Palmer sometime before its demolition for one last hoorah.)
It remains unclear how Latham Incorporated will use the land.
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