Hotels

Victorian splendor in Jefferson, manly minimalism in Archer City: Check into ten charter members of Texas’ inn crowd.

by Suzy Banks

March 1999

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And of course there’s McMurtry’s Booked Up kingdom, where bibliophiles can feed their addiction. From among the 300,000 books scattered through four buildings downtown, I chose a small stack of mostly Texana titles, including one stunningly politically incorrect Texas Guidebook published in 1962. Among its other faux pas—such as suggesting that huevos rancheros is pronounced “wave-us-ranch-ear-us”—it leaves out Archer City entirely.

110 N. Center (U.S. 79); 940-574-2501; www.spurhotel.com. Each of the eleven rooms, with private bath, is $82.50, including a bare-bones breakfast. The Three Forks and a Tune package is $202 for two, including accommodations. MC, V.

Hotel Limpia—Fort Davis

THE HOTEL LIMPIA? HOW ABOUT THE Empire Limpia? In addition to the thirteen rooms in the original 1912 pink limestone hotel, there are eight rooms across the street in Limpia West, a former commercial building, circa 1926. Behind the hotel is the porch-rich twenties-era annex, known in the days before air conditioning as “the coolest building in town,” which now houses one- and two-bedroom suites, some with full kitchens. Five blocks from the hotel you’ll find the Mulhern House, a restored 1905 adobe home converted into three suites. And this spring, the suite-filled Dr. Jones House, built in 1903, will open down the road. Add to this two gift shops, a restaurant, and the only spirited watering hole in these parts, and you begin to wonder if some huge corporation is attempting a takeover in mile-high Fort Davis.

In fact, the force behind the transformation of the town from ranching center to tourist mecca is neither a huge company nor even an entrepreneurial outsider but Joe Duncan, a native of Fort Davis whose West Texas roots go back to the 1880’s. He and his wife, Lanna, moved back to Fort Davis from Dallas in 1991 to run the hotel and related businesses. Despite their longtime ties to the community, Lanna says their expansion is “not very appreciated” by some natives who are resistant to the changes. Obviously, these folks have not had the opportunity to rock away their resistance on the private screened porch of room 34 in the original hotel. With muted floral carpeting and lace curtains on the tall windows, the room manages to be feminine without being frilly. (Lanna is partial to suite 3 in the Mulhern House, with its private porch overlooking Sleeping Lion Mountain out back.)

It was hard to leave the comfort of the claw-footed tub in my bathroom, where I could stare at the original pressed-tin ceiling, way up there, for hours—good practice for gazing skyward at one of the star parties at the McDonald Observatory or contemplating the austere installations at the Chinati Foundation in nearby Marfa. Or, for that matter, for swimming in the huge spring-fed pool in Balmorhea.

On the square (and everywhere) in Fort Davis (800-662-5517, 915-426-3237; www.hotellimpia.com). Rooms, all with private bath, are $79 to $150. Coffee in the lobby, but no breakfast. AE, DS, MC, V.

Luther Hotel—Palacios

I ADMIT IT. I’M A SUCKER FOR RITZY-sounding words like “penthouse,” especially since, until this trip to Palacios, I’d never been in one. So when the reservations clerk at the Luther told me the penthouse was available, I bit, lured particularly by its private balcony overlooking Tres Palacios Bay, a rare arc of Texas coast free of refineries and condos. I was also intrigued by the penthouse’s most famous guest: LBJ. I suppose the hotel, owned by a member of the Luther family since 1939, decided to honor the president by decorating the room as it might have looked when he was president, during those dark days of interior design, the sixties. Fortunately, the balcony, from which I could watch the Norman Rockwell pageantry of the boardwalk unfold as the shrimp boats cruised the bay, more than made up for the huge suite’s Mod Squad accents: foiled and flocked wallpaper in orange, lime green, and puce, pseudo—French Provincial and rattan furnishings, and bright red plush carpet in the bathroom, home to the hotel’s only bathtub, which appeared to have been tiled by someone using his feet.

Despite—or perhaps because of—my room’s kitsch, I was prepared to adore the Luther. Built in 1906 of cypress and long-leaf pine, it has persevered through hurricanes, a fire, and decades of salt spray, a state of affairs that, to my mind, elevates it from an inanimate object to a living creature. Then Billy Hamlin, the gregarious manager, gave me a tour of some of his favorite rooms, like the freshly redecorated blue-and-yellow Dolly Suite, the slightly baroque La Belle Suite, and the simply furnished Magnolia Room, where you can see the bay through the leaves of its namesake tree. No, they weren’t the penthouse, but they were spacious, filled with sunlight, and had clearly been visited by a tasteful decorator at least once since LBJ’s administration. The great thing about the Luther is you can take your funk or leave it.

Many of the rooms come with a full kitchen, in case you’re tempted to stay awhile, gorging on Gulf shrimp and jogging the calories off along the seawall. Be sure to take your binoculars: More than three hundred bird species pass through the area or call the nearby nature preserves home.

408 S. Bay Boulevard (512-972-2312). The 31 rooms in the main hotel, all with private bath, range from $55 for one facing the rear lawn to $150 for the penthouse suite, continental breakfast included. A room facing the bay is $60 and the spacious suites are $75 to $90. No phones in the rooms; televisions in the penthouse, suites, and lobby only. Rooms with full kitchens in the motel court, a one-story building alongside the hotel, rent for $150 to $200 a week. MC, V.

Ye Kendall Inn—Boerne

I’M NORMALLY PREJUDICED AGAINST any business that prefaces its name with “Ye,” but I can forgive the Kendall if for no other reason than its twenty-inch-thick limestone walls. And if only these walls could talk. What began as the Southern Colonial home of Erastus and Sarah Reed in 1859 quickly became a hotel for stagecoach travelers and horsemen. Over the hotel’s 140-year history, proprietors came and went, some more easily than others—one, Edmund King, accidentally shot himself behind the building in 1882—and guests ranged from pioneers headed west on the stagecoach to health-seeking city folk.

By the time Vicki Schleyer bought the Kendall in 1982, it had become a sort of hermit hangout and trash repository on the town square. She didn’t buy it with the intention of reviving the hotel: “I just fell in love with the building.” But people kept showing up with their suitcases. When Schleyer told one such couple that she might open a few guest rooms the next year, the elderly man said that they’d spent their honeymoon at the hotel fifty years earlier, wanted to spend their anniversary there, and weren’t sure they could make it another year. She had to send them on their way, but the reluctant innkeeper soon began restoring the hotel with help from her son, Shane. The impressive result is thirteen antiques-filled guest rooms, including several spacious suites; a window-wrapped dining room overlooking Cibolo Creek; and a lobby—cum—clothing boutique. The Schleyers’ restorative powers have also spilled out beyond the rear patio to include a shopping “village” created from rescued log cabins, an old church, several clapboard homes, and a schoolhouse moved to the site. They must have taken a liking to innkeeping: Two years ago they bought the next stagecoach stop down the road, in Comfort, and began renovating its cluster of old buildings, some dating back to 1857.

Shopping in the many antiques and gewgaw stores along Boerne’s main street seems to be the activity of choice, but if you suffer consumer’s cramp, you can limber up with a hike along the Cibolo Wilderness Trail in town or a swim at the nearby Guadalupe River State Park.

128 W. Blanco (830-249-2138, 800-364-2138; www.yekendallinn.com). Rooms with private bath are $85 to $135, quiche-and-fruit breakfast included. AE, DS, MC, V.

Inn Dire Straits

CALLING ALL DELLIONAIRES: I’M sure you high-tech tycoons are tired of investing in the future. Why not dump some of that disposable cash into the past? If you want a renovation challenge beyond compare, I’ve got two words for you: Baker Hotel. This 415-room, fourteen-story behemoth, one of the largest health spas in the country when it opened in 1929, dominates the horizon as you drive into Mineral Wells. There was a time when Jean Harlow, Judy Garland, and Clark Gable strolled its halls and its ballrooms were filled with the music of famous big bands, but now it stands vacant except for a few dusty storefronts on the ground floor.

Bob Jenkins, the president of the Mineral Wells Area Chamber of Commerce, says the hotel’s current owner, who recently inherited the building, has assured the chamber that he’s either going to do something with the building or sell it to someone who will. “We’ve had two or three lookers this year,” says Jenkins. “Contractors say it’ll take around $20 million to restore it.”

Restore it to what? One by one, the mineral wells in Mineral Wells are being uncapped, and two bathhouses are scheduled to open this year. Despite renewed public enthusiasm for natural healing, however, I can’t picture nine hundred guests checking into a hotel in this tiny town every day. Neither can Jenkins. “It’ll never be a hotel again,” he says. “Maybe a couple of floors of hotel rooms, but most people are looking at it as a multipurpose site—condos, offices, a retirement complex.”

If $20 million is a little steep for you, other, slightly less demanding hotels also await well-heeled saviors. Among them is the towering Hotel Settles in Big Spring, built in 1930, which was recently fitted with new windows—around four hundred of them—thanks to the Friends of the Settles; the group’s founder, Tommy Churchwell, hopes the hotel’s face-lift will attract investors. In Blessing the 1906 Hotel Blessing, a ramshackle clapboard beauty currently functioning on minimal life support, courtesy of the Blessing Historical Foundation, desperately needs a major transfusion. And the list goes on; in small towns across Texas, you’ll find old hotels from grand to simple that have one thing in common: They all need rescuing.

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