The Queen City Hotel
was constructed in 1871 by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
in Cumberland, Maryland
to serve both as a station and as a destination. Hosting over 100 rooms, it also had such features as formal gardens with a fountain, and a ballroom. It was torn down to make room for what became Interstate 68
in the 1970s. The Hotel and Station were designed by Thomas N. Heskett of the Railroad's Road Department in the Italianate
style. The effort to preserve this ornate, victorian-era structure was one of the classic preservation battles of the early 1970s. It was one of the last remaining railroad hotels in the U.S. The battle was lost when the building was demolished in 1972.
The Queen City Hotel served as a summer resort. Located in a valley surrounded by mountains, it provided an escape from the summer heat. The year the hotel was finished the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad company expanded its resort business by beginning the construction of the Deer Park Hotel in Garrett County. The latter resort hotel was destroyed by fire.
The Queen City Hotel was built only a year after the Baltimore and Ohio completed its rail connection to Pittsburgh. This placed Cumberland as a major junction of the route northwest to Pittsburgh and the main line west of the Ohio River.
- Newell, Dianne. The Failure to Preserve the Queen City Hotel, Cumberland, Maryland. Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, 1975. (Outlines the history of the hotel as well as the decision to destroy it.)