Two steps forward and three steps back…we’ve all been there! This week’s offering of the Blast is part 2 about the Morrison Hotel in Shippensburg, but just when I thought I had located all the pieces of the puzzle, a few more missing pieces turn up!
Last week I shared about the Morrison’s and how they came to Shippensburg with a plan…to build a hotel. As it turns out, the Morrison Hotel was not the only successful business this power couple of the 1920s had to their credit. After doing a bit more digging (hence three steps back), I learned that the Morrison’s
actually started in the restaurant business in 1917, three years after coming to Shippensburg. They acquired the Rose Etter restaurant which was located in the property where the G. Herman Smith grocery store was located at 7 East King
Street. They operated this restaurant for five years and then moved the restaurant to the Hockersmith property where Crownover’s dry goods store was located at 12 West King Street. This business prospered as well, and four years later the Morrison’s purchased the property where they would later build a lavish hotel that was the talk of the entire Cumberland Valley!
Now for another history lesson or two…The property at 15 West King Street (home of the new Morrison Hotel in 1929) was purchased by the Morrison’s from the late William Hykes and was known as the former Kunkle home. When the Morrison’s purchased the property, the Killinger Hardware Store was located on the ground floor and the second floor was the Hykes residence.
In a newspaper article dated July1944, the sale of Killinger & Son Hardware made the front page. The article notes that a review of the history of Killinger’s Hardware revealed that the name Killinger first