While the sign Martini Hotel may have raised eyebrows during Prohibition, it was actually the name of the hotel’s proprietor, Albert Martini. Built in 1913, the four-story steel-framed brick structure brought modern construction to downtown Norfolk and opened as the Wangum Hotel, named after nearby Wangum Lake. When Martini bought the hotel and the property extending into the City Meadow in 1926, his grandiose plans called for the installation of a sunken garden in the rear, two tennis courts, and a nine-hole course for clock golf, a popular game in which the players would putt from positions arranged like the dial of a clock around the holes. Martini’s plans never materialized, and the hotel closed after a few years. The building was eventually converted into small apartments with commercial space on the ground floor and was torn down in 1994.

—Ann Havemeyer

Photo courtesy of the Norfolk Historical Society.