Diary of Orrin Brown, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Oct. 8th
Arrived at Kalamazoo at about 4:30AM, rained the most of the time yesterday and last night. Took Breakfast and dinner at the Burdick House, got some tintypes taken, found out that the boys had gone on to Jackson, sent the box to them. Reported and get my furlough extended to Monday, entered the barracks and here I am in Uncle Sams Hotell as one of his boys took up my bed on the soft side of a pine board and went to sleep.
The Kalamazoo Public Library explains that the Burdick House was named for General Justus Burdick, whose home once occupied the site, and was constructed from 1850-1854. A fire leveled the hotel in 1909. The next incarnation of the Burdick Hotel was demolished in an urban renewal clearance in 1972, after Victor Gruen’s conversion of Burdick Street in downtown Kalamazoo to the first pedestrian mall in the United States. Today the site is the location of the Radisson Plaza Hotel.
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