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Hotel Continental

"... John J. Shine, an enterprising Cambridge builder, took out permits in 1928 to construct the Hotels Continental, Commander, and Ambassador...

The Continental opened in the fall of 1929, only a few weeks before the Black Friday of the stock market crash. Less than six months later, the hotel was in the hands of the Federal National Bank, which had foreclosed the mortgage and insisted on operating the hotel itself, “to the apparent delight of some of the bank officials who moved in so that they could see what was going on." It is doubtful that this helped the revenue of the hotel. In any case, both because of the depression and because the bankers made somewhat inept hotel operators, there was no improvement. The bank itself went out of business in 1933, and this caused the Continental to be put up for sale. It was acquired by Warren MacPherson, Robert Moore, and Ernest Henderson for $275,000, a sum which represented about one-third of its original cost, in a transaction which marked the entrance of Henderson and Moore into the hotel industry..." www.cambridgehistory.org



Postcard
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