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They put up a parking lot where a former hotel once stood.
Ana Morales / Archival image courtesy of the Virginia Room, Roanoke Public Libraries
Now, it’s a parking lot, but at one time, a hotel sat at the southwest corner of Salem Avenue and Williamson Road, in the shadow of the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center.
Pictured here is the Big Lick Hotel, which first opened as the Shenandoah Hotel in 1909 as two buildings, separated by an eight-foot alley.
Subsequently, it became Big Lick Hotel, but in 1948, the 105-room hotel property was renamed Lee Hotel. It was owned by the Dayton-Chambers hotel chain, which planned for a renovation of the lodging property, according to “The Roanoke Valley in the 1940s,” by Nelson Harris.
Eventually, the hotel fell into hard times. By the 1950s and 1960s, it was renamed Hotel Earle, and it was raided several times a month for illegal whiskey sales and prostitution, according to a 1994 Roanoke Times article.
A fire gutted the building in 1991, which had 80 rooms at the time, and in 1994, the structure was demolished.
In its place, a parking lot was created to provide parking for nearby downtown Roanoke attractions on Campbell Avenue.
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