2025: Ashland Springs Hotel celebrates its first 100 years

The Ashland Springs Hotel, which opened in as the Lithia Hotel in 1924, is celebrating its 100th year of existence. Lithia Springs Hotel photo
January 1, 2025

Opened in 1925 as the Lithia Springs Hotel, the inn had its ups and downs before the Neuman family restored its grandeur

 By Dennis Powers for Ashland.news

If you step into the Ashland Springs Hotel in 2025, you’re standing amid 100 years of history. The hotel will mark its 100th anniversary in 2025, and it is celebrating with anniversary sale that starts Jan. 1.

When the grand hotel opened in 1925, it was the tallest structure between San Francisco and Portland — and it remained so for decades.  

Ashland investors bought stock to pay for the original hotel. A stock certificate is among the memorabilia on the hotel’s History Wall. Photo by Dennis Powers

Ashland then was also a visitor’s destination because of Lithia Park, its natural beauty and resorts with mineral water cures. The city’s population was 4,250 and its park with the large-canvas beehive dome was where nationally known speakers came with classes presented as part of its summer Chautauqua programs.

Ashland businessmen raised funds

Locals felt that a luxury hotel would help the city to capitalize on those attractions. A group of 10 Ashland businessmen, led by Henry Enders Jr., began selling stock to city residents to raise the construction money.

Portland architects John Tourtellotte and Charles Hummel were making presentations to cities on the sales concept of a “modern skyscraper for small towns,” which at first was a six-story building. After discussion, the owners of the “Lithian Stock Company” — yes, that’s right, and a stock certificate along with old photographs is viewable at the Ashland Springs History Wall — decided on a nine-story hotel that topped out at 112 feet. Built on the corner where a house once stood at First and East Main streets, Tourtellotte & Hummel designed the hotel with reinforced concrete and architectural elements that reflected Romanesque, Gothic and Neoclassical styles. 

1925 grand opening
The hotel was erected at First and Main streets in 1925.

The 100-room hotel was placed in operation on July 1, as interior construction continued, and the grand opening occurred on Sept. 28, 1925, with an elegant dinner for 500 invited guests from throughout Oregon and Northern California.

Considered to be “luxurious, elegant, splendid,” the Lithia Springs Hotel featured a two-story lobby with a grand fireplace, terrazzo floor, mezzanine, dining room, barbershop and a ballroom. The rooms had grand views of the surrounding scenery. Many had twin beds, and 80% of the rooms enjoyed private baths. The construction cost was $200,000.

A series of owners

This was during the Roaring Twenties and before the Great Depression. The hotel ran into financial difficulties, however, when the passenger railroad changed its route to run through Klamath Falls instead of Ashland. Within two years, the Lithia Springs Hotel with its 10 investors went bankrupt. Subsequent owners came and went with different remodeling schemes and renaming. Each ended up financially trapped by their dreams about the grand landmark that overlooked a small town.  

A modest renovation in 1937 reduced the number of rooms and reconfigured the upper floors. It added a huge neon sign with the words “Lithia Hotel” on the roof. A 1950s remodel tried to give the hotel a modern look. Drop ceilings covered the ornately carved beams, carpeting blanketed the marble mosaic floors. Formica and chrome replaced the original accoutrements. In 1960, the Lithia was renamed the Mark Antony Motor Hotel. It featured a swimming pool, consolidated rooms and an expanded ballroom. And it introduced an English Tudor theme to tie in with the growing Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

The Lithia Springs Hotel as it looked circa 1925, the year it first opened. Southern Oregon University photo

By the 1970s, however, the hotel was a place for cheap lodgings and apartments. Tourists wanted motels with larger rooms and private bathrooms. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the once elegant hotel was shut down by 1997. Its furnishings were stripped for auction and the facilities were in desperate need of repair.

New owners, new outlook

Doug Neuman, a real estate developer, and his wife, Becky, had left Santa Barbara 10 years before to raise their children in Ashland. They were also drawn here by the less expensive real estate and gentler regulatory restrictions. Becky’s father, Ralph “Bill” Rounds, had run the large Rounds & Porter Lumber Co. in Wichita, Kansas. He had co-founded Colorado’s Breckenridge ski area, was the largest private landowner in Colorado’s Summit County and served on the Louisiana-Pacific Corp. board. He moved to Ashland when Doug and Becky did, as well as Doug’s parents.

In 2000, the old hotel’s Bullseye Bistro was gutted to make room for a new restaurant, Larks.

Starting at a small base, Doug Neuman built custom homes and condominiums here, and with a partner (later bought out), bought different projects, including Mountain Park Estates in Talent, Pleasant Meadows in Jacksonville and Ashland Village. Purchasing the hotel out of bankruptcy in 1998 for $1.6 million, the Neumans saw a need to completely renovate it with a different look.

The hotel’s ownership had been chronically underfunded. Neuman observed that previous owners would buy the hotel and just “add a little paint.” He wondered: “How could they keep guests if the building’s steam heat had rooms cooking on the lower floors but freezing at its top?”

Restoration specialists

A team specializing in historic restorations was hired to create the interiors. The now 70-room hotel was renamed the Ashland Springs Hotel. New mechanical, electrical, heating and air conditioning, music, fire and safety, and Internet/Wi-Fi systems were installed. The structure’s facade was completely refurbished and repainted. A conservatory was added into the ballroom. And glass doors now opened onto a walled courtyard with a gazebo, fountain and garden. Everything was gutted as the hotel was stripped to its reinforced-concrete frame.

A key was Becky Neuman’s total immersion into its interior design. She chose Candra Scott and Richard Anderson — known for their renovation of historic hotels on the West Coast — to work with her on the “look and feel” of the hotel. The Southern Oregon Historical Society contributed research that led to the History Wall. The redesign sought to evoke what a 1920s visitor to Ashland would feel, including the outdoors with birds and fauna.  

New materials, classic look

The two-story lobby was torn down but retained the 1925 terrazzo floor, large fireplace, decorated columns, ceiling, and stained-glass front window with the “LH.” The lobby and mezzanine balconies retained the original ironwork and woodwork, among other aspects throughout.

The couple spent two years and $10 million to restore the hotel, inside and out, to its former grand days. The interior was recast to infuse a “genteel, turn-of-the-century decor that would honor its past and celebrate its future” with a look reminiscent of small European hotels. The hotel reopened in late 2000 to an appreciative community.

A courtyard accessible from the ballroom was added when the Neuman Hotel Group restored the hotel. Ashland Springs Hotel photo

The hotel was listed again on the National Register in 2000 as part of the Ashland Downtown Historic District. In 2022 the Ashland Springs became a member of the Historic Hotels of America, an official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  

A ‘grand dame’

As Becky Neuman pointed out: “It would rise again and reopen in December 2000 — not as Mark Antony, Roman warrior — but as Ashland Springs, a grand dame with an interest in nature’s wonders.”

In addition to the Ashland Springs, the Neumans, through the Neuman Hotel Group, purchased Lithia Springs Resort on Ashland’s north side. They bought Lake of the Woods Resort, the former Windmill Inn (now Ashland Hills Hotel), the Circle of Teran estate in Ashland and a Red Lion Inn in Medford. After renovations, they have since sold those interests except for the Ashland Springs Hotel and Lithia Springs Resort. Retaining local management, NHG contracted in 2024 with a Tigard, Oregon, firm to manage these properties.    

The 100th anniversary sale, priced from $100, runs from Jan. 1 to Feb. 12. It includes an overnight stay for two, a bottle of champagne, continental breakfast and a 10% discount at Larks restaurant. Call 888-795-4545 or go to ashlandspringshotel.com for details.

Images are from the hotel’s History Wall on the mezzanine level that was created with the Southern Oregon Historical Society’s assistance.  

Sources: Sarah Lemon, “Thinking Big,” Mail Tribune, April 14, 2013; Greg Stiles, “An uncertain future,” Mail Tribune, Jan. 28, 2002; Neuman Hotel Group website, “Our Story” and more; Dennis Powers, “The Ashland Springs Hotel (and the Neumans),” Bicoastal Media — KMED, July 2, 2013; Jim Flint, “Neuman Hotel Group sells Ashland Hills, enters into management agreement for other two Ashland hotels,” Ashland.news, March 23, 2024, at Hotel Management.

Retired Southern Oregon University business law professor Dennis Powers, a historian and author of 30 books, has lived in Ashland for over 30 years. Email him at [email protected].

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