BJ’s
15-17 N. Market Street
The Susquehanna Inn in 1987. From the Fasold Flickr site
From the beginning in the 1850’s until today, hotels and restaurants have operated on this site. And, since it is central to the town, it has been the site of public gatherings of various types.
→ Before the Civil War Nelson Byers opened the “Byers House” here, later named the American Hotel. Then the Keystone Hotel was located on this site.
→ The structure burned down in the Great Fire of 1874 and was rebuilt one year later, opening on September 30, 1875, again as the Keystone Hotel. It remained in business for the next forty-five years. For a few years after it opened, Sigfried Weis had his dry goods store within the hotel.
→ For several years the hotel’s owner had a 125-pound sea turtle on a rope wandering out front. A bit later turtle soup was featured in the restaurant.
1902 horse sale at the Keystone Hotel
→ Horse auctions were conducted from the porch of the hotel in the nineteenth century, with horses proving their mettle by running back and forth in front of the hotel, raising dust. Workers sprayed water on the street to keep it as orderly as possible.
The Keystone as it appeared in a 1921 Sanborn Fire Insurance map. From the Library of Congress
→ The Moeschlin Brothers, Julius and Augustus, owners of the Cold Spring Brewery in Sunbury, owned the hotel from 1908 until 1920. Prohibition went into effect in January 1920, and the Moeschlin Brothers tried to survive by making NEAR BEER (2% alcohol) but were discovered making the real thing and lost their manufacturing license. This likely led to the sale of the Keystone Hotel.
→ During the Twenties, the hotel changed hands several times and housed several different enterprises. In 1920 the Susquehanna Lodge of Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Masons bought the building for which they had elaborate plans: a Lodge on the third floor, apartments on the second floor, and store rooms on the first floor. The Lodge did locate on the third floor, taken over by the local Eastern Lodge in 1922. None of the other plans materialized.
→ In 1922 S. R. Michaels purchased the building and one year later sold it to Harvey Sterner and James Raudenbusch. Sterner was a local shoe factory owner. The two briefly operated as the Sternbusch Motor Company and had an automobile showroom on one side of the hotel space with a garage in the back where there had been a stable. After nine months, Sternbusch was dissolved. Sterner controlled the building and re-furbished it as the Sterner Hotel. The building now had a dining room to the right of the front door, a lobby to the left, a restaurant and soda fountain in the basement and twenty-two “sleeping rooms” upstairs, each with hot and cold running water and some with ensuite bathrooms.
Fred Zimmerman, the Governor of Wisconsin, stayed at the Sterner in 1928 when his airplane was forced to land in a storm.
→ In 1934, after the repeal of Prohibition, a Pennsylvania Liquor Store occupied part of the first floor space. Amid many changes in 1938, the Liquor Store moved up the block.
→ In 1938, the property briefly was held by two local banks, the First National Bank and the Farmers National Bank which sold it shortly later to W. W. Watkins. Watkins re-named it Hotel Governor Snyder.
The Governor Snyder had several important guests staying there, including Jim Morrison of The Doors in 1967, when the group appeared at Susquehanna University.
→ The Governor Snyder Hotel closed in 1982 and was shortly thereafter opened as the Susquehanna Inn by Joseph Duke. He also launched the SawMill Pub there.
→ In 1988 Robert Kirkpatrick bought the building and opened BJ’s. The hotel was closed and some of its quarters became an upstairs dining room and an apartment, as it remains today.
