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Generations have known the Madonna Manor, the impressive four-story brick structure in downtown North Attleboro, only as a nursing home.

I've lived in North Attleboro all of my 50 years, and my only memories of the grand building are of its present use.

As a child, I recall running in the side door and dashing to beat my brother so I could be the one to push the button to the elevator. It was probably the only building in North Attleboro with an elevator. I guess little things were a big deal to us.

We were there to visit my paternal grandmother, who had suffered a serious stroke not long after the Madonna Manor opened. Although a nursing home can be a bit scary for children, I don't remember it that way. My grandmother always seemed happy and well cared for, her room always clean. In fact, she lived there for 16 years, a remarkable testimony to her endurance and the care provided by the nursing home's staff.

But the building - which flashed into the news again last week when the Diocese of Fall River notified the town that it would be moving the nursing home to land on Route 120 in town - has an interesting history that stretches back 80 years. At the start of the 20th century, North Attleboro's business leaders felt they needed a large establishment to draw and keep customers downtown. Nowadays, we'd call it a "magnet." Because Route 1 at that time passed through the downtown, business leaders were convinced that a hotel for visiting jewelry-manufacturing executives and Boston-to-New York travelers would attract and keep shoppers.

Thus, the Hotel Hixon was born.

The Hixon opened on April 14, 1928, at the height of the Roaring Twenties, amid fanfare that rivaled the August 1989 opening of Emerald Square mall. The Evening Chronicle, the town's daily newspaper at that time, described its opening night as "an important day for North Attleboro."

"The new hotel promises to be an important factor in the future development of the community," The Chronicle reported. "The building is located on the oldest and most celebrated highway in America. By its door, millions of automobiles pass every year."

Tiny compared to Emerald Square, it was easily the biggest building in town at that time. With its 63 rooms and elegant ballroom, the Hotel Hixon served as North Attleboro's leading symbol of that prosperous decade.

But the Hixon was doomed to failure. A WPA project during the Depression rerouted Route 1 out of the downtown, through the swampy stretch called East Washington Street - popularly known as "the bypass" - where the highway remains today. Motels, more accessible to motorists and more affordable to families, popped up on Route 1.

On April 23, 1962, the owners of the Hotel Hixon sold the property for $150,000.

"For the merchants, panicked by the decline of downtown, the sale of the hotel was another nail in the commercial coffin," Richard Sherman wrote in his excellent 1976 book, "North Attleborough: An Affectionate History." "George Leven of the Chamber of Commerce reacted with unfocused wrath, attacking 'the money behind the throne' for the town's failure to attract new business which, presumably, would have kept the hotel alive. Al Kandarian, proprietor of The Millstone (a large local restaurant at the time), characterized the demise of the hotel as the 'coup de grace' of the downtown business district.

"Actually, the decline and fall of the hotel was the fault of no one in particular. Much too elaborate for the town's modest needs, the Hixon struggled from the beginning, and the advent of motels merely hastened its doom."

The Hixon's savior, it turns out, was the Catholic church. On Valentine's Day 1966, the diocese reopened the closed hotel as the Madonna Manor, a nursing home which continues to serve as a place of comfort for about 125 men and women. Some of them, no doubt, were living it up as flappers when the hotel opened. Now, the future of the downtown's grandest building is in doubt again. The diocese has promised to work with the town to find an appropriate buyer, and there's plenty of time - the diocese estimates its new nursing home won't be ready until 2011 - but just who will that buyer be? What is the future of this great building?

Is North Attleboro in need of a hotel?

MIKE KIRBY is editor of The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0344 or at mkirby@thesunchronicle.com.