817-819 South Main Street; 1899; Hotel Blende; contributing
This three-story two-part commercial block brick building incorporates two storefronts which have been altered and a centered single door accessing the upper floors. The upper façade is divided into three bays, the outermost of which are penetrated by 3 windows each and the centermost by a single window unit. Fenestration is flat-topped with windows set on rock-faced stone sills and capped with corresponding stone lintels. Above the third-floor windows, the façade is articulated by a corbeled brick cornice...
Built at a cost of $15,000 for hotelier John George and originally containing three storefronts on the first story and 29 hotel rooms above. Its name—sometimes spelled without the terminal “e”—is derived from zinc blende, the mineral whose extraction played the most important role in Joplin’s early prosperity. By the 1920s John Dickerson was the proprietor and by the 1950s the hotel was known as the Melrose, operated by Pansy Fly.
The building appears to be in good condition and is uses homeless shelter and chapel.