From Hotel Dining Room to Golden Arches: The Hemlock Hotel

4 minutes ago

4 min read

Decidedly newer than some of Saginaw County’s earliest taverns and inns, the subject of this week’s Castle Test Kitchen once offered Hemlock residents a place to eat, drink, celebrate—and, if the evening ran particularly late, even spend the night.

For much of the twentieth century, the Hemlock Hotel was one of the community’s most recognizable gathering places. Today, however, you won’t find its brick façade along Saginaw Street. Instead, the site serves up a very different kind of meal.

A New Place at the Table

Built in 1913, the Hemlock Hotel stood on the north side of Saginaw Street between Hemlock Road and Elm Street, at 120 W. Saginaw Street (today’s M-46).

The Hemlock Hotel soon after completion.

Its original proprietors were Carsten and Anna (Stroebel) Gosen. Officially known as the National Brewery Hotel, the establishment was also frequently called the Gosen House or Gosen Hotel—names that could occasionally cause confusion with another Gosen-associated establishment just down Saginaw Street.

In 1917, The Saginaw Daily News described the Hemlock Hotel as a “large and modern hotel.” With its brick façade and distinctive U-shaped design surrounding a rear courtyard, it was an impressive addition to the growing village.

But this was much more than simply a place to rent a room.

The Hemlock Hotel was a restaurant, bar, banquet hall, hotel, and community gathering place all rolled into one. Over the decades, countless meals were served within its walls as residents gathered around its tables for dinners, showers, weddings, receptions, celebrations, live music, and other special occasions.

In other words, if something important was happening in Hemlock, there was a good chance food was involved—and there was a good chance some of it was being served at the Hemlock Hotel.

Dinner on Saginaw Street

When the hotel was constructed, Saginaw Street was still a dirt road. By the 1920s, however, the road had been paved, and increasing automobile traffic along what would become M-46 brought more travelers directly past the hotel’s front door.

The entrance sat immediately along the sidewalk, with street parking available for guests. Inside was a large dining room, tap room, party hall, and a second floor containing 24 modern guest rooms. A small courtyard at the rear provided a quieter place to relax away from the traffic of Hemlock’s increasingly busy main street.

For local residents, the hotel’s dining and banquet spaces helped make it part of the rhythm of community life. Restaurants like the Hemlock Hotel weren’t simply places to grab a bite. They were where people celebrated milestones, met friends, heard music, raised a glass, and lingered over a meal.

The menu may have brought people through the door, but the company helped bring them back.

New Owners, New Names

Like many longtime restaurants and hotels, the Hemlock Hotel changed hands—and names—several times during its history, although the precise dates of some transitions remain unclear.

In 1936, Carsten and Anna Gosen sold the hotel to Leonard V. and Olive Martin of Saginaw. The Martins moved to Hemlock and renamed the establishment The Martin Inn. Leonard Martin died in 1963; remarkably, Olive lived until 1996, reaching the age of 105.

Around 1948, Steve and Katarina Brenz became associated with the ownership and operation of the hotel.

Another chapter began in 1961, when Janina Ostrowski of Hemlock filed paperwork to operate the Hemlock Hotel. By 1963, the business was operating under the assumed name Orlando’s Hemlock Hotel under the Ostrowski proprietorship.

Artifacts recovered from the building before its demise—including Orlando’s Hemlock Hotel menus, advertisements, and record books—suggest that the Ostrowski family remained connected to the business through at its later years.

By the late 1980s, however, the meals, music, parties, and celebrations appear to have come to an end. After roughly three-quarters of a century as a fixture of downtown Hemlock, the hotel closed its doors.

The Changing Face—and Menu—of Hemlock

The building remained standing for another decade, but its final chapter came dramatically in the early morning hours of October 31, 1999.

By then, the property had attracted the interest of the McDonald’s Corporation, which planned to replace the old hotel with a small-town McDonald’s restaurant similar to one in St. Charles. Richland Township approved plans for the restaurant in late July 1999, and developers anticipated razing the hotel and constructing the new restaurant within roughly 45 days.

But by October, the project was still in limbo.

According to Alan J. Talbot, project manager for the Wolgast Corporation, construction had been delayed several times because paperwork needed to complete the purchase of the property had not yet been finalized.

Then came “Devil’s Night.”

At approximately 1 a.m. on October 31, flames were spotted on the long-neglected Hemlock Hotel. Firefighters spent the next several hours battling the blaze and preventing it from spreading to neighboring structures—some only a few feet away.

By dawn, the hotel that had stood along Saginaw Street for more than 85 years had been reduced to a smoldering pile of rubble. The cause was determined to be arson, but the person responsible was never identified.

All that remained of the Hemlock Hotel after the fire.

The fire had accomplished in a matter of hours what demolition crews had been preparing to do for months.

Construction moved ahead, and before the end of 1999, a new McDonald’s stood on the site–the last one built before the millennium.

Perhaps there is something fitting—if bittersweet—about that transformation.

For generations, people had come to this spot on Saginaw Street to eat, drink, meet friends, celebrate milestones, and catch up with neighbors. The building changed. The dining room disappeared. Hotel rooms gave way to drive-thru lanes, and banquet dinners were replaced by burgers and fries.

But more than a century after Carsten and Anna Gosen opened their hotel, people are still stopping at 120 W. Saginaw Street because they’re hungry.

The menu has just changed a little.

The Recipe: Nippy Sauce in the style of Orlando’s Hemlock Hotel

Nippy sauce was a popular name for a dip or spread in the 1970s and 1980s that featured a heavy hand of horseradish--"nippy" being a then-common slang term for spicy. The menu for the Hemlock Hotel notes "French Fried Shrimp with Nippy Sauce," so we went with the creamier dip variation on this classic spicy condiment.