Edmund Campbell and Adolph Linden, both locally noteworthy Roaring ’20s entrepreneurs, developed the Camlin Hotel. For its design, they chose well-known Oregon architect Carl L. Linde, whose 1922 landmark Ambassador Apartments on Portland’s Sixth Avenue can readily be compared to the Camlin.
The hotel’s name (have you figured?) is a neologism made by joining the first syllables in the partners’ last names. Five years more, and the partners would share something nearly as intimate: incarceration in Walla Walla. By running and juggling the finances of not only the hotel, but also a bank, a network of radio stations and more, their 1920s ambitions eventually landed them behind bars for fraud. After a few years in prison, they returned to their families and generally sturdy home lives in the mid-1930s.
