Northwestern Hotel, a brick-faced witness to a century of comings and goings in the East Village, is where you have paused. Opened in 1916, it was built to serve railroad employees and passengers from the nearby Chicago and North Western depot and travelers of modest means; it was especially popular during the Iowa State Fair. The building replaced an earlier hotel of the same name on this spot, and Otto Starzinger built it after his parents Frank and Anna had built and run the hotel before him.
On the street level you can imagine a restaurant, a cigar stand and a drug store that once served guests and locals. The hotel had a formal arrangement with the railroad to accommodate employees in their rooms, a daily reality that shaped its rhythms. Decades later Polk County officials forced it to close in 1982, and in 1983 a group of lawyers remodeled it for office use.
It was recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and, in 2017, became a contributing property in the East Des Moines Industrial Historic District. Notice the retail space filling the first floor now, facing toward the old Chicago and North Western depot nearby.