The Haunted Hotel Blackhawk, Davenport: Cary Grant's Last Night and the Lady in the Evening Gown

Hotel Blackhawk has been the grand hotel of the Quad Cities since 1915. Its eleven-story brick and white terracotta tower on East Third Street in downtown Davenport once held 400 rooms, a ballroom where Guy Lombardo and Stan Kenton played, and guests from Herbert Hoover to Jack Dempsey. After years of decline, a fire and a city takeover, it was restored at a cost of more than $46 million and reopened in December 2010. Today it is Hotel Blackhawk, Autograph Collection, a Marriott property with a AAA Four Diamond rating.

Its ghost story is tied to one of Hollywood’s biggest names. On November 29, 1986, Cary Grant fell ill while preparing for a show at the nearby Adler Theatre and was taken back to the Blackhawk, where he was staying with his wife. He died that night at a Davenport hospital. Ever since, guests and staff have told stories of a distinguished older man in the halls, and of a woman in an evening gown who seems to be on her way to a dance. It is one of the best-known entries on our list of haunted hotels in Iowa.

The ghosts of Hotel Blackhawk, Autograph Collection

Cary Grant

Cary Grant came to Davenport in late November 1986 to headline “A Conversation with Cary Grant” at the Adler Theatre, a sold-out fundraiser. During the afternoon rehearsal he began to feel unwell and had to be helped from the stage. He went back to his room at the Blackhawk, where his wife, Barbara, was waiting, and did not want to see a doctor. When a doctor did come to the hotel, he found Grant was having a massive stroke. Grant was taken by gurney to St. Luke’s Hospital and died there at 11:22 that night, aged 82.

Stories that he died in his hotel room are wrong; he was pronounced dead at the hospital. But his last hours in the hotel are what the legend grew from. Guests have reported seeing a tall, well-dressed older man in the upper hallways who is gone when they look again, and some are sure it is Grant. Marriott’s own travel blog repeats the story that guests have glimpsed the actor wandering the hotel.

Which room was Cary Grant's?

This is where accounts disagree. Marriott’s travel blog and several ghost sites say Grant’s stroke happened on the eighth floor. One paranormal website says investigators rent Room 907 to try to reach him, and that maintenance workers there feel watched. Contemporary news reports we found do not give a room number. We would treat both the floor and the room as part of the legend rather than fact.

The lady in the evening gown

The hotel’s other well-known ghost is a woman in a vintage evening gown, described as red in some accounts and blue in others (perhaps two women, perhaps one). She is said to float along the corridors as if heading down to the ballroom. Reports describe her as calm and pleasant rather than frightening.

Given the Blackhawk’s history of dances in the Gold Room and big-band nights, it is easy to see why the story took hold.

Music in the ballroom

Some ghost-story collections add a musician who haunts the ballroom, with piano music heard when nobody is playing. There are few first-hand accounts of this, and it may be a later addition to the hotel’s legend, but it fits a building where some of the biggest bands of the 1930s and 1940s played.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The eighth floor: Where many versions say Cary Grant was stricken. The floor was also the site of a 2006 fire, during the hotel’s empty years.
• Room 907: Named by one paranormal site as a room investigators request to try to contact Grant. We could not confirm this with the hotel.
• The upper hallways: Where the distinguished older man and the woman in the evening gown are most often described.
• The Gold Room and ballroom spaces: Restored in 2010, and the setting of the phantom music stories.

History of Hotel Blackhawk, Autograph Collection

The Blackhawk was financed by Davenport businessman W.F. Miller and built for about $1 million on the site of the old Saratoga Hotel. It was designed by Temple and Burrows, with Arthur Ebeling as associate, in a Renaissance Revival style with Art Deco touches. The first seven floors and 225 rooms opened on February 16, 1915. In 1920 four more floors were added, bringing the hotel to eleven stories and 400 rooms.

For half a century it was the place to be seen in Davenport. The company bought the nearby Davenport Hotel and other hotels across the upper Midwest, added a Junior Ballroom and enlarged the Gold Room in 1935, and booked big bands including Guy Lombardo and Stan Kenton. Guests included Presidents Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon (Rooms 412 to 414 are known as the Nixon Suite), poet Carl Sandburg and boxer Jack Dempsey.

The decline came quickly. By 1973 stockholders were told the hotel was bankrupt, and after a run of foreclosures a court ordered it closed in 1976. It reopened in 1979 after a renovation, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, but it struggled again. Under casino ownership from 2000 it deteriorated, and in 2006 a fire started in a meth lab on the eighth floor. The city later took over the property.

A restoration costing more than $46 million began in 2009. The hotel reopened on December 15, 2010, with about 130 guest rooms, apartments, a restored lobby atrium and Gold Room, a pool and a re-created basement bowling alley. It joined Marriott’s Autograph Collection in March 2013. Barack Obama is among its more recent guests.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a room on an upper floor; that is where most of the stories are set. The hotel does not market a haunted room, so treat any room number as a request rather than a promise.
• The Adler Theatre is a short walk along Third Street. Stop by the theater, where Cary Grant gave his last rehearsal, then come back to the hotel bar for a drink.
• Look for the restored lobby atrium and ask whether the Gold Room is open to look at during your stay.
• Davenport sits on the Mississippi: walk the riverfront after dark, then cross to Rock Island, Illinois.
• Make it a river weekend with a night at Hotel Julien in Dubuque or the DeSoto House Hotel in Galena, both about 90 minutes north.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Hotel Julien, Dubuque: the Mississippi River hotel with an Al Capone legend
• DeSoto House Hotel, Galena: Illinois’ famous haunted hotel, across the river
• The Mason House Inn, Bentonsport: Iowa’s most haunted inn, in the southeast of the state
• Haunted hotels in Illinois: just across the Mississippi
• Haunted hotels in Iowa

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Wikipedia: Hotel Blackhawk
• KWQC: Cary Grant died in Davenport on this day in 1986
• 97X: The night Cary Grant died in Davenport
• Notes on Iowa: The death of Cary Grant
• Marriott Traveler: Haunted hotels
• Haunted Houses: Davenport, Iowa
• Only In Your State: Hotel Blackhawk

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