Manufacturer: Mayer China
User: Warden Hotels
Pattern: Harmony
Date of celery tray: 1930s-early 1940s

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Notes: As early as 1894, Frank G. Warden was co-proprietor of the Hotel Metropole in Chicago and owner/proprietor of the Warden House in Newark, Ohio. He later expanded into a small hotel chain in the mid-West.

By 1911, the Warden Hotels chain included the Lima Hotel, Warden Hotel and Arcade Hotel in Ohio, the Delaware Hotel and Wescott Hotel in Indiana, and the Alabama Hotel in Alabama. (These hotels are listed in the shield of the Warden Hotel crest on a Maddock Pottery compote.

Excluding the Warden Hotel, all of these hotels were owned by individual proprietors by 1918.

An ad in the 1929 Hotel Red Book shows Warden retained the Warden Hotel in Ohio and added four Iowa hotels under the Warden Hotels banner: the Chamberlain Hotel, Jefferson Hotel, Maytag Hotel and Ottumwa Hotel.

To summarize, the following is a compilation of the known Warden Hotels, based on Hotel Red Book entries from 1906 to 1943:

• Alabama Hotel (100-rooms) – Anniston, AL (1909 – 1913);
• Delaware Hotel (125-rooms) – Muncie, IN (1906 & 1909);
• Wescott Hotel (125-rooms) – Richmond, IN (1913);
• Chamberlain Hotel (225-rooms) – Des Moines, IA (1918 – 1942);
• Jefferson Hotel (150-rooms) – Iowa City, IA (1929 – 1942);
• Maytag Hotel (105-rooms) – Newton, IA (1929);
• Ottumwa Hotel (150-rooms) – Ottumwa, IA (1927 – 1939);
• Lima Hotel (100-rooms) – Lima, OH (1911 – 1913);
• Warden Hotel (75-rooms) – Newark, OH (1894 – 1943); and
• Arcade Hotel (100-rooms) – Springfield, OH (1911 – 1918).

This celery dish is crested with a shield around oval frame containing interlocking WH monogram, with Warden Hotels curved over the shield. Laurel branches are flanking the shield. The copyrighted Harmony pattern as a brown Art Nouveau flower and vine border.

(Just as a point of interest, what is called the Harmony pattern in this piece was identified as the Vineland pattern in a preceding Mayer catalog, shown above.)

For related info:
Warden Hotels by Maddock Pottery
Warden Hotels 2 by Maddock Pottery

Photos contributed by L Paul