1926

The San Marco Hotel was built in 1926 by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) as part of the initial development of the City of Venice. The hotel opened in November of that year after only 90 days of construction. The hotel had a decorative ground floor lobby and space for 13 shops plus a restaurant. The upper floors had 92 residential rooms with private baths. The hotel design incorporated the Mediterranean Revival style in keeping with the master plan formulated by John Nolan for the City of Venice. Its steel and concrete construction made it the most durable building in the city.

The hotel was a showpiece of the newly emerging "City on the Gulf," and then fell into disuse following the financial failure of the BLE in 1928 and subsequent effects of the Great Depression. The hotel sat empty until 1932, when it reopened as part of the winter campus for the Kentucky Military Institute (KMI), the oldest private prep school in the country. From January through Easter, cadets were quartered in rooms on the two upper floors and attended classes in the space available on the ground floor. This seasonal operation continued up to 1970 when KMI closed the Venice campus due to dwindling funds and the political winds of the time. The building was not used for a few years until renovations were made in the mid-1970s, again turning the former hotel into a mixed-use facility, with condominiums on the upper floors and retail units on the ground floor.

The San Marco Hotel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2010 as part of the John Nolan Plan of Venice Historic District.

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