Texas Tries to Right Wrongs Inflicted on Its Historic Hotels

It was the Roaring ‘20s. Entrepreneurs and wealthy businessmen bustled into town every week, looking to expand westward and capitalize on new railroads. Buildings went up overnight. A good idea could make you a fortune in a single day. A bad idea could lose you that fortune just as quickly. Dallas and Houston were for those who played it safe. West Texas was for the bold and the daring.

And, after the sun set, the bold became bolder.

Men donned tuxedos and top hats, wives dressed in their finest ballroom gowns and everyone would head to the Settles Hotel.

Their destination wasn’t an imitation of a grand hotel back east. The Settles became a legend among businessmen back east.

“They just don’t throw parties the ways they used to at the Settles,” humorist Will Rogers said.

He was right.

Red carpets streamed elegantly up the huge staircase, ascending in two directions to the second floor. Each pillar featured ornate woodwork accented by sculpted marble angels. The second-floor ballroom, crafted with a delicacy lost in modern times, was alive with revelers who danced the night away underneath what was once one of the largest crystal chandeliers in the world.

Memories Entombed

Six decades later, the 15-story Settles still dominates Big Spring’s skyline, but it is quiet and, for now, uninhabited. The hustle-bustle of stagecoaches, the laughter of businessmen on the brink of success, the laconic beat of swing music are but echoes of a celebrated past.

Just a few months ago, walls were splattered with graffiti. Birds’ nests created a stench amid the falling plaster and rotting wood. The hallways were dark and deserted.

Elsewhere in West Texas, relics like the Plainview Hilton and the Baker in Mineral Wells also are shuttered. In Lubbock, the nearly 90-year-old Pioneer Hotel is a tomb of memories, slowly decaying in the center of downtown as an owner tries to gather support for a possible renovation.

In Eastland, preservationists are seeking private funding and grants to restore the 79-year-old Connellee Hotel into a community center.

There are some success stories. Conrad Hilton’s first hotel, located in Cisco, now houses the Chamber of Commerce and a museum memorializing the famous innkeeper’s exploits. The Cactus Hotel in San Angelo hosts weddings, proms and the symphony. El Paso’s Paseo del Norte, where guests once watched Pancho Villa from the hotel roof, is prospering, and the Tiffany dome over its first-floor lobby has been faithfully restored.

And, bound inextricably to Big Spring, the moribund Settles may yet survive against the longest of odds.

Vandals Victorious

The battle to save the Settles was a fierce one.

“People said it detracted from people wanting to come to the city,” said Tommy Churchwell, a Big Spring business leader. “The first thing you see coming into town is this huge building that looks like some kind of dungeon or ghost hotel, and it just wasn’t very inviting.

“But at the same time there was a lot of cynicism. When we started talking about refurbishing it, people said, ‘We’ve heard it all before.’ I was the craziest guy in town for more than a year.”

Some residents even called a local radio talk show, offering to wager that any effort to repair the Settles would fail.

Churchwell believed that the hotel, now owned by the city, could be leased floor by floor to different businesses if it were not an eyesore. The firms would be responsible for restoring their own space.

But persuading a business to set up shop in the Settles would be no easy feat.

From the late ‘60s to the early ‘80s, the building was sold to one promoter after another--most with promises to restore the hotel but at least one with plans to remove the hotel’s treasures and sell them.

First went the marble stairs, then much of the wooden sculptures, and finally even the wall paneling and the floor.

“It was really sad how the hotel was sold away piece by piece,” said John Walker, editor of the Big Spring Herald and member of a group called Friends of the Settles. “I think there was this sense that there was nothing anyone could do to stop it, and then it seemed like people just stopped caring.”

Every window was broken. Gangs broke into the building, spray-painting graffiti and sometimes pushing huge stone corner pieces off the roof and onto an overhanging patio. The stone crashed through several floors.

“This building has almost been completely destroyed,” said Kenny Davis, a city code enforcement officer. “We’ve had trouble keeping kids out, and it really couldn’t have taken a worse beating over the last several decades.”

Said Churchwell: “I thought that if we could just do something to make the place look nicer, something to make people dream about what the building could look like again, we might be able to gain support.”

From that theory came the Friends of the Settles’ campaign for private citizens, businesses and other organizations to “own” a window in the building for $150. By late 1999, $70,000 worth of modern tinted glass had been installed.

“The windows protect the interior from the elements, and looking at the building now when you drive into town you would almost think there could still be people staying there,” Churchwell said.

The Settles’ supporters raised $10,000 with a haunted house event at Halloween, ironically taking advantage of the condition of the hotel’s interior.

“We knew we’d never be able to do everything at once,” Churchwell said. “But sometimes if you just get people to start dreaming, things can fall into place.”

By year’s end, all the doors at street level were replaced and the graffiti was gone. A cellular phone company leased space on the first floor. The newspaper threw a post-Christmas parade party in what once was the Settles’ restaurant.

“It’s just the beginning, but it is the beginning,” Churchwell said. “The wrongs of the past can be righted.”

The Cactus Flowers

Built in 1929 by Conrad Hilton, the 14-story Cactus Hotel in San Angelo was almost a twin of the Settles. In the early 1960s, the hotel closed and a businessman turned the building into a retirement home. That saved the Cactus until 1982, when a fire tore through it. Firefighters put out the blaze, but the owner didn’t have the money to comply with the fire code.

For 10 years the Cactus was dormant.

In 1992 the First United Methodist Church bought the property, hoping to use the parking lot. The church gave the deed to the city, which created the Historic City Center Project Corp.

The corporation, headed by Lee Pfluger, solicited businesses to lease the facility.

“It was a success almost from the start,” Pfluger said. “We just had a lot of interest. Not just because it was cheap building space, but because everyone knew that saving this building was important.”

Now the Cactus houses two radio stations, a cafe, a bar, a bakery, a beauty shop and two floors of apartments.

With the rent paid, the hotel’s huge ballroom and mezzanine became a center for cultural and social events for the first time in decades.

“We have ballroom events almost every weekend,” said Marilyn Flage, the building manager. “We have 12 proms this spring, weddings all the time. The orchestra is also based here. It really is a great resource for the city.”

The Father of Resorts

T.B. Baker was born in 1899 with a 1990s imagination.

In those days, folks in Mineral Wells told tales of those who drank the water and lived long into their 100s. The story of a demented woman who drank the water and became sane made news across the nation.

Some tried to bottle the water and sell it. Others tried to sell the land for outrageous prices. But only Baker had the genius to build a mammoth hotel on top of the well and advertise it as a resort for the wealthy.

And for $30 a night--about $200 in today’s currency--you could drink all you wanted.

Surrounded by comfort, guests could douse themselves in mineral water, which could take five years off their age, Baker advertised.

“He really is the father of the modern-day resort,” says Bob Jenkins, president of the Mineral Wells Chamber of Commerce. “He was clearly a man ahead of his time.”

There is something almost eerie about Baker’s ability to see the future.

For example, many spa rooms were furnished with mechanical chairs with electronic devices that moved the feet back and forth and rubbed the back. The rooms’ lights were linked to the door handle so that the light automatically came on when a guest opened the door.

“This place became popular on a level that Mineral Wells hasn’t seen since,” Jenkins said. “It was hard to know what was the bigger draw, the hotel or the water.”

The hotel had three stairwells, one for the rich, one for their servants and one for those who wished not to be seen.

Judy Garland and Lawrence Welk fit in the first category. The outlaws known as Bonnie and Clyde fit in the last one. All visited more than once.

The hotel is full of little trick doors and secret rooms.

In Baker’s 10th-floor quarters, you can push back a cabinet to reveal a closet in which Baker reportedly concealed his liquor during Prohibition.

On the third floor, a hidden door led to a gambling parlor.

Baker watched his masterpiece fall on hard times in his later years. He died in 1972, just one year before his hotel closed its doors.

What followed was a scenario similar to the Settles in Big Spring. New owners sold much of the interior, vandals sprayed graffiti on some of the walls and the building fell into disrepair.

Jenkins is spearheading a renewed effort to sell the building to private investors interested in preserving its historic look, but is willing to take a chance on turning it into a money-making venture.

“We’re thinking of something along the line of condos,” Jenkins said. “Maybe housing for the elderly. We could close up the floors not in use until someone comes along and wants to buy the space. It’s not an all-or-nothing deal.”

Folks in town hope that the hotel will one day be a place where people live. Meanwhile, the Baker dominates every approach to Mineral Wells.

“There is something ominous about a huge empty building that just sits there,” said Jake Peirson, who works in a sandwich shop on the same block as the hotel. “We like it, but we want it to be turned into something. It’s not a hotel anymore, so let’s turn it into something else.”

Reviving the Music

In downtown Abilene, restaurateur Joe Allen sells chicken-fried steak in a former railroad warehouse. The Cypress Building shed its metal siding and now is home to the Chamber of Commerce and a thriving bookstore. And what was once the Drake Hotel is now the Grace Museum, Abilene’s art, history and children’s museums all under one roof.

The Windsor Hotel, the Drake’s distinguished competitor, is somewhat more controversial.

Built in the late ‘20s and sold several times, the Windsor could have become Abilene’s version of the Settles until out-of-town interests purchased the structure to convert the upper floors into housing for the elderly.

The new owners have leased all but two of its 80 units. The spaces are reserved for people 55 or older who earn only 60% of the area’s median income--$15,780 for one person. The buyout by the National Development Council of New York City was hailed as a new beginning for the hotel, but has since left several residents disenchanted.

“Once again, an Abilene landmark and some of its citizens are being raped by outside-of-the-city ownership,” wrote tenant John Baldwin in a letter to management.

Baldwin, a 72-year-old World War II veteran, and other residents claimed the owners are slow to make repairs, noting that the building had only one maintenance worker. They also said windows would not close properly, tap water became scalding hot without warning and the doors to the rooms lacked deadbolt locks.

“Frankly, they don’t give a damn about the tenants,” Baldwin said. “It’s obvious. They think we’re a bunch of idiots.”

The council in New York did not return numerous calls for comment.

Meanwhile, the conversion of the hotel is nearly complete.

Almost all the interior has been remodeled, and the old marble carvings have long since been replaced with modern hardened plastics.

But the hotel still has at least one treasure that escaped the 1990s overhaul.

On the second floor, the 1920s-era ballroom looks almost exactly as it did in 1928. The dance floor is a huge expanse of polished wooden planks with marble outcroppings lining the walls and huge windows at either end.

Back in the 1940s, the floor became a favorite of a young, then-unknown bandleader named Lawrence Welk. On the right day, you still can hear music because the jazz band from Cooper High School holds concerts there.

“We still have weddings here all the time, and other formal occasions,” said Patty Ramstead, who works at the hotel. “We almost never have a vacancy during an open time for the ballroom. It’s so beautiful. Who wouldn’t want to get married here?”

As for the rest of the building: “Sometimes evolution is necessary to survival,” Ramstead said. “As long as we keep the ballroom, we keep the spirit of the hotel alive.”

Amarillo’s 15-story Herring Hotel, dormant since the 1970s, may get a new lease on life, thanks to local businessman Robert Goodrich’s affinity for its ballroom.

Goodrich bought the 1926 hotel partly because he remembers dancing in the ballroom, the Crystal Palace, on the night he graduated from Amarillo High School.

“There’s a lot of history there,” said Goodrich, who hopes to reopen a downtown hotel in the building. If the hotel doesn’t make money, Goodrich will remodel the Herring into luxury apartments. He said he is finding investors, contractors and business people needed to embark on his plans.

“I believe we need to make good use of our central business districts and discover ways to restore them,” Goodrich said.

Talking Turkey

The Hotel Turkey in the Texas Panhandle is a place where the clock stopped ticking.

Unlike the lavish hotels that were thought to be unsinkable, this tiny inn has done what almost none of them managed to do--stand the test of time.

Nestled just off the main road in Turkey, Texas, population 553, the two-story hotel is modest in appearance. There’s a porch, a screen door and a few lawn chairs out front. Inside, antiques are everywhere. In the phone booth, a rotary phone with a separate earpiece sits above a contemporary phone. A venerable black piano stands in the corner.

The rooms are furnished with antiques, many of which have been used in the hotel since opening day in 1927. The beds have slender wooden posts that extend several feet above the mattress. The well-polished desks could be museum pieces, but they are meant to be used. The walls are adorned with dresses and suits of the early 1900s.

“This isn’t a hotel, it’s an experience,” says Gary Johnson, co-owner with his wife, Suzie. “If you come here, you stay in a place that is truly special, not just a place that is really nice.”

The Johnsons don’t lock the doors. In case innkeepers aren’t available, there is a sign at the front desk that reads: “Find a room that’s empty and enjoy your stay. Breakfast is served at 8 a.m.”

Expecting more--maybe bellhops or beds being turned down at night?

“People who want that kind of mess can head to Dallas,” says Jody Nelson of Amarillo, a frequent guest.

The Hotel Turkey lacks an attractive location like the restored Gage in Marathon or the Limpia in Fort Davis, both at the entrance to the Big Bend. Given Turkey’s minuscule size, it might not have survived as a museum, as has the Adobe Hotel in Fort Stockton and the Pecos Hotel in Pecos.

Instead, family ownership preserved the Hotel Turkey’s legacy, along with family hospitality. Consider the 1950s and 1960s, when it was operated by the Bains.

After a day of riding horses at a friend’s ranch, young Navarre Bain would often walk into his room at night to find his father had thrown his possessions in a closet and rented the room to a guest.

“That’s the kind of spirit this hotel has,” Suzie Johnson said. “That’s the way we want to make folks feel when they come here, like they are home. That’s why a hotel like this can still work in Turkey.”

Johnson said West Texas can’t afford to abandon its frontier hotels, regardless of their size or state of disrepair.

“Maybe we can keep these places,” Suzie Johnson said. “It’s not important for the building; it’s important for us and remembering who we are and where we came from. The frontier is why there even is a West Texas or even a Texas. That’s an important thing to remember.”