Visiting the Hotel Grinnell – Grinnell, Iowa

Hotel Grinnell: a schoolhouse turned hotel in this Iowa town

In this college town, a boutique hotel holds old schoolhouse charm.

By Betsy Rubiner Special to the Star Tribune

MARCH 3, 2018 — 6:55AM

JIM KRUGER • PROVIDED BY HOTEL GRINNELLModern furniture meets old-school charm at Hotel Grinnell, a recently opened schoolhouse-to-hotel conversion in Grinnell, Iowa.

“This is where I learned to dribble,” a man said as he entered a hotel ballroom in the central Iowa college town of Grinnell. Sure enough, beneath the ballroom’s banquet tables was the shiny maple floor of a former school gymnasium, complete with basketball court lines.

Like my husband and me, the man and his companions were among several groups of visitors wandering on a cold winter Saturday around the town’s latest attraction, the Hotel Grinnell, which opened last fall in a former public school.

Unlike us, the man had a personal connection to the place, dating back to the late 1940s. He wasn’t the only former student we met. The welcoming woman at the front desk, who gladly showed us around, volunteered that she had attended school in the building during the 1970s.

With stylish guest rooms in former classrooms, Hotel Grinnell is located in a well-tended downtown of historic brick storefronts. It lies a short walk from what has helped keep this community of just over 9,000 residents relatively prosperous (for rural Iowa) and a magnet for out-of-towners: Grinnell College, a renowned liberal arts institution with about 1,600 undergraduates.

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Visiting the Hotel Grinnell – Grinnell, Iowa

Hotel Grinnell: a schoolhouse turned hotel in this Iowa town

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Visiting the Hotel Grinnell – Grinnell, Iowa

Hotel Grinnell: a schoolhouse turned hotel in this Iowa town

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