Arnold Falk raised this tobacco warehouse in 1881, and today it houses the Lancaster Arts Hotel in front of you. Built by Arnold Falk, a New York–based entrepreneur, this structure was raised to serve Lancaster’s burgeoning tobacco industry and remained a working tobacco warehouse until 1945. After that year it sheltered a paper and twine business and even an electronics company before the building was thoughtfully redeveloped in 2006 into a boutique hotel.
Today the hotel folds contemporary art into hospitality, featuring rotating exhibitions by regional artists and preserving striking traces of its industrial past. Notice the exposed brick walls, the wooden beams overhead, and the original hardwood flooring underfoot — tangible links to the building’s late-19th-century origins. The Lancaster Arts Hotel is a contributing property to the Harrisburg Avenue Tobacco Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Notice the exposed brick, the wooden beams overhead, and the original hardwood flooring underfoot — traces of the tobacco warehouse, the paper and twine years, and the electronics plant this building once was.