Ellsworth was born on October 26, 1863 in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of William Jackson and Mary (McKinney) Statler. His father, a German Reformed clergyman, tried to piece out his income by farming, but the family was large and the living was still hard.
When Ellsworth was five his family moved to Bridgeport, Ohio, and at nine the boy went to work in a glass factory across the river in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he endured intense heat for a wage of fifty cents - rising later to ninety cents - a day.
At thirteen he found a position as bell-boy in a hotel in Wheeling, the McClure House. There he began polishing his manners and his language, taking the hotel bartender as his model at first, and advanced to the position of night clerk, then to that of day clerk; meanwhile he studied bookkeeping and the details of hotel management. He was not yet of age when he took over the billiard room and railroad-ticket concession in the hotel.
A little later he opened a combination lunch room, billiard hall, and barber shop in Wheeling, from which he derived a comfortable yearly income. In 1896 he bought the restaurant concession in the Ellicott Square Building, Buffalo, New York, and prospered with it. During the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, he built and operated a temporary frame hotel of 2, 100 rooms near the exposition grounds.
Though he made no profit on the venture, he acquired both reputation and experience, and in 1904 won the privilege of erecting the famous Inside Inn on the grounds of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, upon which he cleared $280, 000 profit.
Before the summer was over he began building a hotel in Buffalo, the Statler (later the Buffalo), the first in the country in which each room had running ice-water and a bath. The cardinal rule of the house, and afterwards of his entire business, was "The guest is always right. " He later built the New Statler in Buffalo and in rapid succession a Statler hotel each in St. Louis, Missouri, Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan, and took over the management of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York.
At his death his hotel properties were the largest owned by one man, their annual receipts being estimated at $25, 000, 000. In 1926 he was decorated by the French government with the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was for several years president of the Hotel Men's Mutual Benefit Association of the United States and Canada.
He died in New York City of pneumonia.
Ellsworth Milton Statler was owner of the Hotel Statler of Boston. He originated the practice of slipping a morning newspaper under the door of each guest's room, and is said to have been the first to install a radio connection in every room of a hotel. Several other devices to promote the ease and good will of guests were his, and his name became a symbol for comfort, courtesy, and efficient service. The Statler Hotel in Buffalo was the first in the country in which each room had running water and a private bath. By the mid-1920s the Statler hotel properties were the largest in the nation owned by a single individual. In 1984, E. M. Statler (as he preferred to be called) was inducted into the Wheeling, West Virginia Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Hospitality Industry Hall of Honor in 1997 along with Curt Carlson, Charles Forte, Baron Forte, and Ray Kroc.
The slogan of his hotel business was “The customer is always right, ” and he took pains to provide for comfort and convenience in his hotels.
He was married twice: on April 16, 1895, to Mary I. Manderbach (d. 1925) of Akron, Ohio, and on April 30, 1927, to Alice M. Seidler, who had been his secretary for many years.
