10/19/2026
🎈 Before the Grand Opening: The Broadway Building Takes Shape, c. 1927
💯 As we continue to celebrate the Centennial of the Broadway Building at Ariel Broadway Hotel, we're thrilled to share a truly special image, one that captures the very moment this landmark was rising from the ground.
📸 This photograph shows the Broadway Building in Lorain, Ohio, under construction, circa 1927. The photographer is unknown, but they left us a priceless gift, a look at the bones of a building that would define this corner for a century.
🏢 This is raw steel and concrete, not yet covered by the beautiful Beaux‑Arts facade we know today. Workers climbing beams and scaffolding, building something meant to last. The intersection of Broadway and West Erie Avenue, still taking shape.
🥳 The Broadway Building was constructed in 1925‑1926, with businesses moving in by early spring 1926. So this "c. 1927" photo likely shows final touches, or perhaps a second angle taken shortly after completion. Either way, it captures the excitement of something new, a modern, innovative facility that would house everything from a bowling alley to government offices.
🕓 Just a few years later, the Broadway Building was fully leased, bustling with lawyers, doctors, the IRS, the Social Security Administration, and a popular restaurant. It survived decades of change, and multiple painstaking restorations, reopened as the Ariel Broadway Hotel, and home to Broadway Grill & Games, The Anchor Lorain, Lolipop's Gift Shop, Main Street Lorain Development/ Lorain GrowthM Skinwork Bar, Devoted Homecare Lorain and Beauty by Viv (Viviana Lopez).
💪 Today, when you walk through our doors, you're walking through history, walls that took shape in 1927, windows that have watched Lorain grow, and a foundation that has held strong for 100 years.
📷 (Photograph from the Doane Collection, Lorain Public Library System. Circa 1927. Photographer unknown.)
🤔 Did you get your tickets for Centennial of the Broadway Building at Ariel Broadway Hotel?
👇 Share your memories of the building from its early days below!
