The Park Place hotel on the corner of Summit avenue and St. Peter street, was at one time one of of the swell hotels of the city. It was a frame building, four stories high and nicely situated. The proprietors of it intended it should be a family hotel, but it did not meet with the success anticipated, and when, on the 19th of May, 1878, it was burned to the ground it was unoccupied. The fire was thought to be the work of incendiaries. The loss was about $20,000, partially insured. Four firemen were quite seriously injured at this fire, but all recovered. * * * * * The Carpenter house, on the corner of Summit avenue and Ramsey street, was built by Warren Carpenter. Mr. Carpenter was a man of colossal ideas, and from the picturesque location of his hotel, overlooking the city, he could see millions of tourists flocking to his hostelry. The panic of 1857, soon followed by the great Civil war, put a quietus on immigration, and left him stranded high on the beach. Mr. Carpenter's dream of millions were far from being realized, and when on the 26th of January, 1879, the hotel was burned to the ground, it had for some time previous passed beyond his control. * * * * * At one time there were three flourishing hotels on Bench street. The average citizen of to-day does not know that such a street ever existed. The Central house, on the corner of Bench and Minnesota streets, was the first hotel of any pretension built in the city, and it was one of the last to be burned. The first session of the territorial legislature of Minnesota was held in the dining room of this old hotel building, and for a number of years the hotel did a thriving business. As the city grew it was made over into a large boarding house, and before the war Mrs. Corbett was manager of the place. It was afterward kept by Mrs. Ferguson, George Pulford and Ben Ferris, the latter being in possession of it when it was destroyed by fire. The building was burned In August, 1873. * * * * * A hotel that was very popular for some time was the Greenman house, situated on the corner of Fifth and St. Peter streets, the site of the Windsor hotel. It was a three-story frame structure and was built in the early seventies. Mr. Greenman kept the hotel for some time, and then sold it to John Summers, who was the owner of it when it was burned. * * * * * The Merchants is the only one of the old hotels still existing, and that only in name, as the original structure was torn down to make room for the present building many years ago. * * * * *