Historic but vacant California landmark Hotel Marysville gutted by fire that burned all night

The future of the historic but vacant Hotel Marysville, a near-century-old landmark in the Northern California town, was likely sealed Sunday after a fire gutted the five-story national landmark overnight.

Whether the building will remain on the skyline of the Gold Rush-era city of 12,000 residents will now be in the hands of structural engineers, city officials and others who have floated alternating proposals to rejuvenate or level the building for four decades.

Marysville firefighters and allied agencies from across the Yuba-Sutter region responded to the blaze on the 400 block of Fifth Street at E Street just after 10 p.m. Saturday. First responders encountered dangerous flames engulfing the third and fourth stories, said Marysville Fire Chief Kyle Heggstrom.

As crews worked through the night, they encountered dangerous conditions for the building completed in 1926 that had sat empty for nearly 40 years, he said. At one point, firefighters had to be pulled away from the building’s first floor and higher up as the building showed signs of failure.

“Crews made numerous internal attempts to try to stop the fire on both the third and fourth (floor) and, again, it just continued to just be outside of our grasp,” Heggstrom said. “We started calling multiple resources throughout the Yuba-Sutter area and Butte County.”

Crews from Yuba City, Linda, Olivehurst and Wheatland, as well as Cal Fire brigades from Loma Rica and Butte County, responded after an all-hands call went out for the city’s department, he said.

“We gave a couple more interior pushes and then, at about midnight, made the determination that the building was not safe to occupy and I pulled my guys out,” he said.

No injuries were reported and, so far, no civilians have been found inside the hulking ruins, Heggstrom said.

Arson investigation underway

The fire was still smoldering on Father’s Day morning, he said, as authorities worked to shore up the building, put out the remaining hot spots and work with Caltrans to return downtown’s streets to normal operation. That effort is likely to take a couple of days, Heggstrom said.

The cause of the fire was unknown, he said, and the city has moved to begin an arson investigation with its probation officer as “soon as I feel it’s safe for him to go inside.”

Heggstrom said that his department had received “numerous” calls for service at the empty building over the years for a variety of fires, often started by homeless people who had taken refuge there.

While the structure had been empty for years, timber and lathe were all the fire needed to hollow out the building, which Heggstrom said lacked modern fire-suppression capabilities and fire alarms.

On Sunday as he assessed the damage, Heggstrom said crews would remain on site over the “next 24 to 48 hours” as officials worked to keep chunks of the brick-and-concrete facade from falling onto nearby E Street, the city’s main thoroughfare that carries Highway 70.

“(It’s) a unique structure in itself and, then of course, with the fire damage, it does create a significant hazard,” the chief said.

Surrounding buildings were not damaged by the fire, which Heggstrom said was a more difficult to fight than last year’s blaze at the Glacier Ice Co., which destroyed that Marysville landmark. The “ice house,” as it was known, burst into flames in July and called out a similar response that lasted 18 hours and resulted in the building’s collapse. The cause of that fire remains under investigation.

Final chapter for grande dame

This fire may have been the final nail for the Georgian Revival building that was funded by residents of the once-prosperous mining community nearly a century ago. Despite its grandeur, the Hotel Marysville fell on hard times and closed down in 1989.

The Hotel Marysville was considered the grande dame of downtown buildings in the town that is among the state’s oldest. Designed by San Francisco architect Edward Glass in the 1920s, the hotel was the star gem in the diadem of downtown bars, dance halls, vaudeville theaters and assorted eateries.

It sported a first-class dining room, a coffee shop and a cardroom, according to previous Bee reporting. The main ballroom’s floating dance floor was considered an engineering marvel. It was visited by Sacramento legislators, movie stars and celebrity sportsmen.

For over 50 years, the hotel’s ballroom was the venue for high school proms, firefighters’ balls and society wedding parties.

After the hotel shuttered, consecutive councils sought to tear it down as an eyesore and public health menace.

Building’s rebirth never materialized

Over the years, the building has changed hands multiple times with developers proposing a renaissance for the structure — including plans for apartments, Caltrans District 3 offices and mixed-use plans that were never able to get rolling due to the high cost of renovation.

The final renovation plan came a few years ago when the building was purchased by Lance Robbins, founder of Urban Smart Growth. The company had a track record of rehabilitating distressed buildings in Los Angeles and Robbins had a grand vision to create a hub of housing and nightlife for the city at the nationally registered historic landmark.

That proposal faded when Robbins, 76, died last year. The building had been on the market since November with an asking price of $925,000, a fire-sale price for a building likely to cost millions to bring to code.

“It’s an iconic building to the city of Marysville,” Heggstrom said. “And there has been a lot of recent conversations of rehab or trying to make it something.”

Overnight, as crews encountered embers and heavy smoke 30 to 40 feet in the air, residents of Marysville congregated behind fire lines to watch as the building was consumed well into the early morning hours. Photos from the Marysville Appeal-Democrat in daylight showed the building in shambles, in what could be its last station before being torn down.

Heggstrom said all that was left was the “skeleton of the structure,” adding that “the internal components have all burned away.”