Life at Moriards Hotel

This photo has been a bit of a challenge, to be sure. It appears to be a hotel or boarding house in the late 1800s, and there's no accompanying information as to where it is.

What struck me, though, was that for such an evidently popular place, there didn't seem to be a sign advertising the place, not even anything in the windows. As I stared at a very high-resolution scan of the print, I realized, though, that there was some writing present: the blank area between the first and second floor windows on the front seems to be a slightly brighter white, and there is evidence of very, very faint writing. So I re-loaded the image into Photoshop and started to work at enhancing the area. The results are on the right.

The difficulty is in making out the first letter. Discounting the first letter for the moment, there are at least five variations that are legitimate names: Boriards, Goriards, Horiards, Moriards, Poriards. Based on what I can discern of the first letter, my money is on Horiards or Moriards, and I'm favoring the latter.