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Peter Elliott

 

Ad for the Elliot House from the Fargo Forum 1893

Ad for the Elliot House from the Fargo Forum 1893

Peter Elliott was a man who moved to Fargo in April 1893. Before he moved, he worked on a steamboat sailing up and down the Red River, to and from Winnipeg. After his time working on the steamboat, he spent two years working as a surveyor for the United States surveyors. When he relocated to Fargo, he opened a restaurant in the basement of Martin Hector’s building on the corner of Front and Fifth. His restaurant was very popular among the Fargo citizens. In 1882 he leased a massive three story building that was located just to the west side of where the Citizens National Bank was located. Here,  he opened his hotel, “The Elliott House”, and restaurant of the same name. Both the restaurant and hotel grew in popularity within the community. It grew so much in popularity that Peter Elliott had to turn people away nearly every night because both had reached full capacity. When the fire ravaged the city in 1893, it destroyed the building, a loss of approximately $10,000.  The devastation of the fire didn’t keep Elliott down for long. It wasn’t more than five days after the fire and Elliott already had tents set up and was serving food to the distraught citizens of Fargo. Elliott did his best to run a  first class operation, even if it was under canvas. Very quickly he entered an agreement with I.P. Clapp to invest in the Syndicate Block. He had a two story structure built for his new Elliot House. It had offices, a kitchen and multiple dining rooms on the first floor, and hotel apartments up on the top story. The entire building was heated by steam and illuminated by electricity. – Mathias Zastrow, Digital History, 2012

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