(destroyed) White Pelican Hotel/Balsiger Building - Klamath Falls, OR
N 42° 13.706 W 121° 46.638
10T E 600898 N 4675863
**Destroyed May, 2016** This empty and damaged Balsiger building was once the location of the prominent White Pelican Hotel before a fire burned it down in 1926.
Waymark Code: WMK7N5
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 02/24/2014
Views: 2
Located at the corner of Esplanade and Main Street is the Balsiger 'Ford' Building, known to locals as the 'Egyptian Building' because of the Egyptian-revival architectural elements that encompass the front and sides. What most locals don't know is that this location was once home to the prominent White Pelican Hotel built in 1911 and unfortunately burned down in a fire on Oct. 16, 1926. The Balsiger Building was built and opened four years later in 1930 by Elmer Balsiger, to house his Ford dealership. The dealership moved out of the building in 1995 and the building then became home to Cell Tech, a blue-green algae health food company that made millions in the mid-to-late 1990s dredging locally grown algae out of nearby Klamath Lake and manufacturing health food pills and other supplements to the public. The company went bankrupt after a bitter divorce/feud between the married owners sometime after 2000.
The city eagerly wants to renovate this building and hopefully attract a new business to take over but the stagnant economy has hampered that process.