As the former Marting Hotel begins accepting lease agreements for new tenants, an Ironton couple is making plans to re-establish the once-grand restaurant that will be housed on the first floor.

Monday, May 01, 2000

As the former Marting Hotel begins accepting lease agreements for new tenants, an Ironton couple is making plans to re-establish the once-grand restaurant that will be housed on the first floor.

Greg Haynes, a chef with 35 years of experience, will manage and operate the restaurant once remodeling work is completed.

And this will not be an average, ordinary dining experience, he added.

"What we want to have is a white dining room –  tablecloths and linens, the works," he said. "We’ll have an upscale menu with items like shrimp cocktail and Oysters Rockefeller and a nice Sunday brunch."

But, to make the experience complete, the new restaurant owners say they need to restore a piece of the building’s history.

"We want to restore it to its original beauty," he said. "But, to do that, we need some help in the way of photographs and stories from people who remember eating at the Marting in the 1940s and 1950s or so."

Haynes and his family want to combine the old with the new for the proper dining atmosphere, he said.

"We’d like to have pictures we might be able to copy and frame for hanging in the dining room and lounge areas," he said.

The family is not only interested in photographs that depict the hotel and town’s history. They also want to know what about the furnishings in the dining room.

"We’d even like a picture of what the carpet in the dining room looked like when the hotel was in its prime," Haynes said. "We want to bring back as much of the original beauty of the restaurant as possible, and to do that, we need pictures and details."

Pictures of Ironton’s history also are of interest, he added.

"We’d like to have pictures from major events in the city, too, like the flood and things like that," he said. "History is very important when a person is undertaking a project like this. If anyone has any pictures or information, I’d love it if they would give me a call at home at 532-1250."

The Marting Hotel, originally completed in 1919, was designed by prominent early 20th century Columbus architects McCarty and Bullford.

The seven-story Italian Renaissance Revival style building faced with dark brick will house 50 one- to two-bedroom apartments and a recreation area and laundry facility.

The lower level of the building, which was placed on the National Historic Register last year, will be rented to people interested in opening up a restaurant or other business.

Other projects in the works by Arthur Howard Winer and Associates include a 50-unit family complex at Storm’s Creek, and a 31-unit family complex at 10th Street, Winer said.