Hotel Loraine, also known as The Loraine, is a ten-story hi-rise built as a hotel in 1924 a block southwest of the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. It was the city's leading hotel from the time of construction to 1968. In 2002 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Walter Schroeder was a Milwaukee businessman who inherited his father's insurance, mortgage, and bond business in 1897. In 1912 he orchestrated the establishment of a rebuilt Wisconsin Hotel in Milwaukee. When it failed to make a profit, he took over management and turned it around. He decided he liked the hotel business, and proceeded to build a chain of large hotels in Wisconsin cities: the 1918-20 Astor on the Lake hotel in Milwaukee, the 1922-23 Hotel Retlaw in Fond du Lac, the 1923 Hotel Northland in Green Bay, the 1923 Hotel Wausau, the 1923 Hotel Loraine in Madison, the 1923-24 Hotel Duluth, and the 1926-28 Hotel Schroeder in Milwaukee. By the 1920s Madison was short on modern hotel rooms around the capitol square. The whole city had a total of 700 rooms, and the only existing first class hotel on the square was the Park Hotel, with 170 rooms. The Piper brothers completed the Belmont Hotel, in 1924, adding 200 rooms. Schroeder opened the Loraine in the same year. The Wisconsin State Journal gushed: A million dollar hotel - the needed link between a $25,000,000 university and a $17,000,000 state house - is the Hotel Loraine, Wisconsin's newest hostelry and the leading one in the state outside of Milwaukee. From kitchen and baggage room to the beautiful Crystal ballroom, the new Loraine is sumptuously furnished and well appointed in every particular. The structure is patterned along the lines of the Northland in Green Bay, Wisc., and the Retlaw in Fond du Lac, Wisc. It is owned by the same company, the Hotel Wisconsin Realty Company, Walter Schroeder, president, and will be operated on the same plan and under the same policies that have made the Schroeder string hotels known from coast to coast. Completion of the Loraine marks an important place in the history of Madison. For years conventions have shunned the beautiful Four Lakes city while festivities at the University of Wisconsin have had to put up at homes, members of the legislature have had to room about the city in private residences and distinguished visitors have been