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Marion Hotel | |
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| Location | Ocala, Florida |
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| Coordinates | 29°11′16″N 82°8′14″W / 29.18778°N 82.13722°W |
| Built | 1927 |
| NRHP reference No. | 80000955 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | October 16, 1980 |
The Marion Hotel is a historic hotel in Ocala, Florida, United States. It is located at 108 North Magnolia Avenue. On October 16, 1980, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The manager of the hotel in the 1930s was Norton Baskin, a career hotelier originally from Union Springs, Alabama, who had worked in hotels in Atlanta, Valdosta, GA and Lake Worth, FL before coming here in 1933. It was here that he met the famous author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings who was living nearby in the hamlet of Cross Creek. The story of their long courtship is told in the 1983 movie "Cross Creek," which featured Mary Steenburgen as Marjorie and Peter Coyote as Norton. While Norton Baskin managed the hotel, famous guests included actor W. C. Fields, novelist Sinclair Lewis (the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature), and journalist John Hersey, author of "Hiroshima" and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. With money made from her bestselling novel "The Yearling," Marjorie was able to invest in a hotel, run by Norton Baskin, in St. Augustine, where the couple moved and married in 1941. In 2022 plans were announced to restore the Marion Hotel building as a boutique hotel, after decades serving as a bank and office building.
Gallery
References
External links
- Marion County listings at National Register of Historic Places
- Marion County listings at Florida's Office of Cultural and Historical Programs
- Early Ocala Hotels (Ocala Government site)
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