Tag: Maltby House (City Point VA)

Williss, Historical Base Maps. Appomattox Manor – City Point says: The Maltby House, which formerly stood on the south side of present-day Maplewood Lane, was a large L-shaped structure occupied by sutlers and/or soldiers during the occupation of City Point. No other information regarding this structure has been uncovered. The date of construction is not given on the 1865 Railroad Map. However, it likely pre-dated 1864-1865.

New York Times, Oct. 12, 1864 says: City Point is at last betraying some symptoms of latent civilization. We have a hotel! Mr. A.C. KIMBALL, in connection with Mr. MALTBY, or Baltimore, (brother of Mr. L.A. MALTBY, proprietor of the celebrated Maltby House in that city) seeing the necessities of this locality, have come to the rescue in the nick of time, and put up a spacious building that can now afford he hapless wayfarer both food and shelter. Until their advent, it was impossible to conceive a place more utterly inhospitable to the wandering traveler, who happened to have no acquaintance here, or was unable to find his way to the United States Sanitary Commission for temporary protection. For a bed, there was a wharf, or the bed of the river, and as to food, there were one or two mythical places, called “restaurants,” somewhere on the hill, where one could pay a dollar for a cup of undrinkable coffee and some uneatable ham and eggs, of extremely doubtful character.

The new hotel, which is inaugurated under the very respectable name of the “Maltby House,” is a frame building, erected in the shape of a T; 110 feet in front and 101 feet deep, with accommodations, when thoroughly completed, for 150 beds. They have two large dining-rooms, one 40 feet by 30 feet, for officers and citizens, on the table d’hote system, and another 30 feet by 30 feet, for soldiers, citizens, &c., on the European plan of a restaurant. The rates will be one dollar per meal, and one dollar for lodging, or four dollars per day. Some idea of the energy shown by the gentlemen who have this matter in hand, is proved from the fact that twenty-two days ago the lumber of which the building is erected was in Baltimore, and that the hotel has already been running four days, although, of course, by no means yet in a complete state. Such, however, is the eagerness to grasp accommodation of any kind, that rooms are not only bespoken but actually taken possession of and occupied, even in an incomplete state.