128 North Oneida Street (Appleton, Wisconsin)

128 North Oneida Street was the address of a building on the southeast corner of Washington Street and Oneida Street, most recently used as a senior apartment complex under the name Washington Place.

History
For over 100 years, the location was home to a hotel operated by members of the Conway family. The earliest incarnation was a small frame building constructed around 1863, housing a farmers' hotel run by Catherine Conway. This building, the Outagamie House, was demolished around 1886 and was replaced by a 22-room hotel, the Sherman House, which opened in 1888. Renamed the Hotel Conway in 1922, a six-story addition was built in 1926. The 1888 building was demolished in 1960 for another six-story addition, and the building was renamed the Conway Motor Hotel.

In 1975, the Conway Hotel Company announced plans to convert the building into federally-subsidized senior housing, and build a new 150-room hotel elsewhere in downtown Appleton. The hotel's final day of operation was October 15, 1976, leaving the city with no hotels. The Conway Hotel Company continued to operate in the building, opening the Sherman House restaurant on May 1, 1977, which aimed to recreate the atmosphere of the turn-of-the-century hotel's dining room. The building was one of the few structures on the block that was not demolished during the construction of The Avenue Mall in the mid-1980s.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development took over the building in 2002 and sold it to the Appleton Housing Authority for a token amount of $10. The AHA renamed the building Washington Place and held a ribbon-cutting ceremony there on November 20, 2002. The agency quickly began seeking a replacement for the aging building, which had been nicknamed "the tower of terror", and began construction on Riverwalk Place in the Eagle Flats development in 2010. Washington Place residents moved into Riverwalk Place in July 2012, and the building was demolished in the spring of 2013.

As of January 2022, the location is city-owned green space known as Washington Square. It is the proposed future site of a mixed-use building which will form the first phase of the Urbane apartment and retail complex. The second phase is set to be built on the former Washington Building site at 115 North Washington Street.