- I'm Emily Buermann from the Becker County Museum in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and this is our Artifact Spotlight.

(gentle music) This is the story of Mary Lewis and the Lewis Hotel in Detroit, Minnesota.

So Mary Kalmar is born in Pennsylvania in 1846.

So she's out east.

she's in a good family.

She's raised up as a lady, and she grows up, gets married, and has three children.

And then she becomes a widow.

Mary and the kids move out west to Detroit, Minnesota, and she marries Samuel Lewis.

Now, Samuel Lewis is the carpenter in town, and he's got a store right on Washington Avenue which is like the main street in Detroit.

So Mary decides to open a tea shop upstairs above her husband's business.

And she wants to have decor in her tea shop.

So she starts collecting creamer pitchers for tea.

And then people do what people do when they find out you collect something.

They start gifting you creamer pitchers.

So soon she has amassed so many creamer pitchers that she needs to keep a journal of which creamer pitchers they are, the descriptions of them, where they came from, who gifted them to her, and when they arrived in the collection.

So she now has 600 creamer pitchers, and 1890ish they decide that there's gonna be tourism coming into the town of Detroit, and what people really need, they need tea.

They want tea, they don't need tea, but what they need, they need hotel rooms.

They need places to stay.

And so they expand the carpentry shop downstairs and the tea shop upstairs.

They add an entire building off the back and create the Lewis Hotel.

And it's this full business booming because the Lewis Hotel is right across the street from the Northern Pacific Railroad Train Depot.

Now, when they check in at the Lewis Hotel, (bell dinging) there's a few rules.

There is no politics, no religion, no personal business, no gossip, and absolutely no cussing, which is difficult since right across the street are the railroad workers and the loggers and the construction people who are coming in and building the railroads.

So after awhile of marketing 600 creamer pitchers, it's not really working anymore.

People have seen it.

Have you been to the Lewis Hotel?

They have 600 creamer pitchers.

I've seen it.

Okay.

You know what else she's got?

She's got a giant ball of store string.

Every time a package arrives at the hotel or the carpentry shop on the railroad, it's wrapped in paper and with string and they have started keeping every piece of string.

They tie it end to end and they start wrapping this giant ball of store string and they stick it right on the lobby desk.

So when people walk in, now they see this giant ball of store string, which is cool.

Okay.

Have you been to the Lewis Hotel lately?

I haven't.

They have a giant ball of store string.

I need to go check that out.

So they've got people coming in looking at the store string and that's great.

And that works for a while.

And then people have seen it.

She needs something new.

So she cuts a deal with the butcher shop down the street who have a two headed calf.

So instead of talking about politics or religion or gossiping, you now have something of a conversation starter to get you talking if you really can't think of anything better to say.

And pretty soon, "Have you been to the Lewis Hotel?

They've got a two headed calf."

"I've seen it."

Okay.

What else can you do?

So Mrs. Mary Lewis looks up in the train catalog and orders a talking parrot.

So everybody's got to go to the Lewis Hotel and see the talking parrot right in the lobby.

So they walk in, the parrot starts talking.

Everyone's charmed.

Marketing is going great.

People are coming to eat in the dining room.

They're coming to stay in the hotel all to see her conversation starters.

Well, if you have a talking parrot, there's always the chance that someone's gonna teach the parrot a bad word or two behind her back.

And so as soon as the talking parrot started to cuss, Mrs. Mary Lewis would get rid of it and order a new one.

And then eventually someone would teach it how to cuss.

She'd have to get rid of it and order a new one.

This parrot then came with the rest of the collection to the Becker County Museum.

This is parrot number 12.

And that is the story of Mrs. Mary Lewis and her genius marketing for the Lewis Hotel.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.