The Hotel Maytag opened for business on Dec. 21, 1926 as a prominent and luxurious five-story building owned by F.L. Maytag.
“We’re especially proud of the historic Maytag Hotel from the standpoint of its historic character,” said Fred Chabot, of Newton’s Historic Preservation Commission. “Louis Sullivan is the master of the art form of this architecture and we’re proud the historic property that the architect and builder Incorporated are still there, including the terracotta decorations on the outside of the hotel.”
The hotel was built by Henry Raider, of Chicago, and constructed by Lanny Brothers Construction, of Oskalooska.
The hotel was known as the first hotel west of the Mississippi River to feature air conditioning in the 1930s, according to local historian Larry Hurto. The hotel was also one of the first to have radios in each room, according to Newton Daily News archives, and was named one of the most outstanding hotels in the Midwest. The Hotel Maytag is listed as one of four hotels in Newton in a 1935 telephone book.
“As far as size it was one of the largest, especially for a community this size,” Hurto said. “It was a remarkable thing.”
Soon after the hotel was built, George Hundling and his associates installed the Capitol Theatre, which was one more elaborate in the country for the size of the Newton. The theater featured an orchestra which played during silent films and was for decades run by the Hundling family.
The street-level commercial areas also offered a jewelry store, Doane Insurance and Helma Cole’s Style Shoppe.
The 119-room hotel, featuring 10 apartments with kitchenettes, was also well known for its hotel coffee shop — the current Midtown Café. The Hotel Maytag’s Cameo Room was a sophisticated dining area for hotel guests and private parties. Traveling salesman who frequented Newton were regular guests of the hotel.
Room prices ranged from $1.50 single per day to $3 with bath, according to an article composed by Irene Hotger Zickel who wrote about the Hotel Maytag in Hurto’s 1992 book “A History of Newton, Iowa.”
Zickel said the ballroom, on the second floor, was of French Renaissance decor and had a seating capacity of 300.
“The ballroom really was a tremendously wonderful thing,” Hurto said. “The Hotel Maytag was really quite the institution I think.”
It’s believed that F. L. Maytag was so fond of his hotel employees, Hurto said, that each was remembered in his will after he died in 1937.