Wareham Hotel

Harry P. Wareham moved with his family from Flush, Kansas in 1868, when he was two years old and when he was nine and his brother, William, was eleven, their father died. Mrs. Wareham, Sarah, established the Wareham Millinery Company, which she ran for many years.

As a teenager, H.P. Wareham built a roller skating rink at 2nd and Humboldt in 1884, and then an ice house on the west bank of the Blue River. H.P.’s ice house had the capacity for 2,000 tons of ice and he sold up to 150 rail cars of ice to the Union Pacific.

H.P. Wareham built the Wareham Hotel, the city’s first phone system, first sewer system, an outdoor theater, and in 1893 took over Moore’s Opera House, which later became the Wareham Theatre. William Wareham was the accountant and the “glue” which held all of H.P. Wareham’s enterprises together.

The Wareham Hotel stands where the Wareham Airdome originally occupied the space between the Courthouse property and the 4 story Wareham Office Building now adjacent to the hotel. The Airdome was an open air theatre where the stage opened to the north and inclined bench seating rose northward from the stage.

The Wareham Theatre was remodeled in 1910 to replace the Wareham Opera House.