Page 36 - Hancock County Tourism ~ 2021 History

Do you know about...
the Crescent Hotel (Pickwick Hotel) & Hotel Reed
One of the first and finest hotels in Bay St. Louis in the late 1800s was the Crescent Hotel, owned and operated by Capt. John V. Toulme,
a businessman and former Bay St. Louis mayor. Located at the intersection of Beach Boulevard and the railroad tracks, the
hotel was the largest of
its time, housing up to 100 guests who enjoyed tennis, croquet, swings, walking paths, and fresh water from an artesian well. The hotel was renamed the Pickwick Hotel when ownership transferred to Mr. John Shansy. He in turn sold the property to Horatio Weston, son of Logtown lumber magnate Henry Weston, who renamed
it the Hotel Weston. When fire destroyed it
in 1923, Weston rebuilt the hotel at the corner of Ulman Avenue and Beach Boulevard. After Weston passed away, Robert Reed purchased the property, renamed it yet again, and operated the Hotel Reed until 1959.
That same year, local physician Dr. Wesley McFarland saw the
Pickwick Hotel, formerly Crescent Hotel
need for an elderly
care facility and helped convert the hotel into a nursing home with 16 beds. In 1962, Mr. and Mrs. David Smallwood bought it, changed the name to Gulf View Haven
Nursing Home, and took in nearly 2,000 patients. An extensive remodeling project took place in 1977 and the home was re-opened with 80 beds under the name Hotel Reed Nursing Center. It
Hotel Reed
closed in 2002, and the building sat deteriorating until a fire of unknown origin gutted it on Christmas Eve in 2011. It was later torn down.
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