Glen Rose Hotel - Glen Rose Downtown Historic District - Glen Rose, TX - NRHP Historic Districts - Contributing Buildings on Waymarking.com

"The Glen Rose Hotel is three-story cream-colored brick Spanish Colonial Revival hotel building that fronts onto Southwest Barnard Street just over a block away from the Courthouse Square. Visually one of the most prominent buildings in the town of Glen Rose, the three-bay Two-part Commercial Block structure has provided lodging for travelers, holiday makers, and health seekers for over eighty years. With an L-shaped plan, the building measures 112 feet 9 inches long plus a 10-foot deep covered masonry front porch. It stands 36 feet 10 inches wide at the front. The building has a rectangular extension at its eastern rear corner measuring 14 feet 2 inches by 26 feet 10 inches, giving a width at the rear of 50 feet 10 inches. The facade of the Glen Hotel has three bays, each separated by a pilaster surmounted by a decorative limestone finial. An arched single-story entry porch protects guests coming and going from a large single entry door with a fixed pane of glass. The four masonry porch posts are faced with native stone. Atop this front porch is a steel fire escape serving the third floor. On the front, sides, and rear are six-over-one wooden sash windows admitting light and air to guest rooms, public areas, and work areas. A number of these openings have been fitted with window-style air conditioning units. Exterior woodwork is painted a dark cream color. Around the front and southeast sides of the building at cornice level are decorative overhanging faux eaves covered with pressed metal shingles that simulate red ceramic tiles. The roof is flat and drains to gutters concealed in decorative pilasters located on the sides of the structure. Two additional public entries are located at the base of the rectangular extension to the building and facing the parking area on the northeast side. The former side door has one large fixed pane of glass and a fixed sidelight on either side, while the latter has three fixed panes. Both of these secondary doors afford protection from the elements with fabric-covered awnings on metal frames. The rear of the hotel, constructed of less expensive red brick material, also is pierced by openings fitted with six-over-one wooden sash windows. Patrons are able to park off Southwest Barnard Street on a little-used extension of West Cedar Street that separates the hotel from the nearby William Carter Building (Property #36).

The Glen Rose Hotel came into existence in the town of Glen Rose at the peak of hotel building in the United States during the decade of the 1920's. Throughout the nation entrepreneurs and companies invested large sums of money in constructing hotels to accommodate travelers, little knowing that the proliferation of automobiles during the coming decades would draw motorists increasingly to competing tourist courts and later to motels. Because the Glen Rose community attracted visitors both for medical treatment in sanitariam and for recreation in its multiple water parks, the town seemed like a logical place to build a multi-room hotel facility. C.R. Berry constructed the hotel in 1928 in the popular Spanish Colonial Revival style, selecting fashionable cream-colored brick and adding limestone and faux tile ornamentation. The hotel featured standard rooms, suites, and its own large dining room. In addition to accommodating guests, the Glen Rose Hotel also housed a wide range of other businesses. Among the enterprises using the space were hair dressers, dentists, hearing aid salesmen, and itinerant photographers. Ownership of the hotel changed over the years, with some of the owners including A.V. and Alberta Wade, George S. McGee, T.A. Russell, J.M. “Joe” Russell, Helen and Hugh Leslie, and Dharmendrakumar S. and Sucheta Vyas. During the operation of the adjacent Snyder Sanitarium (Property #38), the Glen Rose Hotel provided lodging for overflow patients who were unable to secure rooms at the health facility. Known today as the Glen Hotel, the hostelry continues intermittently to provide accommodations for travelers."