Texas State Hotel At 720 Fannin St.

[sevfiv]

Kudos to the current owners (Club Quarters - who weren't named in the article...) for taking the steps to get this designation. Joseph Finger would be proud.

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories...63&ana=e_du

http://www.clubquarters.info/houston.asp

http://hotels.arch-ive.org/txst

[pineda]

thank goodness somebody fixed up this hotel, it was a true dump for many years! Edited February 4, 2008 by pineda

[Vertigo58]

thank goodness somebody fixed up this hotel, it was a true dump for many years!

It's a miracle! We had to stand next to it for months (bus) while streets were being redone and was quite dangerous and a sad sight. Seems like just the other day that several floors pancaked while under construction. They thought it was alost cause at that point but continued on.

There needs to be a BIG celebration with Mayor White present! Cheers!

[FilioScotia]

Kudos to the current owners (Club Quarters - who weren't named in the article...) for taking the steps to get this designation. Joseph Finger would be proud.

The Texas State Hotel in downtown Houston has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the nation's official list of cultural resources worthy of preservation.

This is good news of course, but let's not forget what this really means.

The National Register is only a list of places that some people regard as "worthy of preservation."

Being on the list does nothing to preserve a historic structure, and it provides no protection from demolition by developers.

It just guarantees the developer will get some negative publicity when the deed is done, and that's about it.

Edited February 5, 2008 by FilioScotia

[tmariar]

Was the Texas State also called the San Jacinto?

So suggested the GHPA bit linked in Pineda's link, and the 1929 article seems consistent.

[sevfiv]

Ah, thanks guys.

Found some information about the hotel in the mid-eighties that i wasn't aware of - UT leased the hotel to a hotel management partnership (who did not maintain it well), had a dispute with them, and then "emptied" the hotel of its residents (about 250 people) - most elderly, disabled, etc. UT then put it up for auction and it was sold to Texaco, the only bidder.

Sawyer said his income is the monthly $490 disability check he gets from the U.S. government. Because of wounds he suffered fighting in the Army in World War II's Pacific Theater, he has worked only sporadically as a counter clerk and short order cook, he said.

Sawyer gets by with the help of another longtime hotel resident, Charles Harvey Parks, also 65.

Parks said he bides his time running errands for Sawyer and caring for his cousin and roommate, Robert Kinney, 56.

Within three hours of the switch at the hotel, Parks had found a room at another downtown hotel for Kinney and himself. But Parks was still irate that the Texas State Hotel "family" had to break up without a month's eviction notice.

"I thought there was a law to stop something like this," he said.

Parks has lived in the hotel since January 1984, using monthly Social Security checks to pay the way, in one of the few rooms where the air conditioning still functions.

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1986_249412

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1986_250899

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1987_489994

[Downtown JuJuB]

Does anyone have any info on whether or not Club Quarters maintained any of the original architecture in the interior?   The exterior is beautiful - I’d love to think they preserved some of the history when it was renovated. 

[EspersonBuildings]

I'm almost sure the lobby is original (restored).  The molding is quite beautiful.

[Subdude]

I think they got as close as possible to the original interior, bypassing some unfortunate 1960s redos.