HOTEL GENERAL CUSTER
(Detroit Free Press, November 30, 1941)
A memorial to the old Indian fighter, General George Armstrong Custer, Monroe's hero, which John S. McMillan proposes to build is a magnificent, 120 room hotel. A site already has been chosen on the southwest corner of North Monroe (US 25) and West Elm (M 130) and facing the River Raisin for the estimated half million dollar structure.
A Custer Shrine is proposed, to be housed in a room 50 by 30 feet in one ground floor wing, where relics of the Indian fighter's military career will be shown, together with the Anheuser- Busch painting of "Custer's Last Stand," now in possession of an historical society in Washington, D.C.
The Custer Monument, which was erected in 1910 in Monroe by the State of Michigan, McMillan hopes to move to a new pedestal in front of the hotel.
John A. Holabird, a West Point graduate and head of the Chicago architectural firm, Holabird and Root, has drawn plans for the building. Gilbert P. Hall drew the artist's rendering. Because of his interest in Custer lore, Holabird has offered to supply an oil painting of Mrs. Custer's favorite portrait of the General, to be housed in the Shrine Room.
Priorities on structural steel, McMillan anticipates, may delay erection of the Hotel General Custer until after World War II, but in the meantime he is organizing the Monroe Hotel Company to acquire the land formerly used by the Sisters of I.H.M. for a convent and school. The site, now in use as a city parking lot, faces a park which McMillan would acquire and rename Custer Park.
(Detroit Free Press, November 30, 1941)
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