Features
Couple lovingly restore Whistler Hotel
ANGLETON, Texas (AP) — Robert and Mary Smith are adding a new chapter to a building that already has a storied history.
The couple have finished remodeling two rooms of the former Whistler Hotel, creating theme suites and preserving the past of the once-bustling hotel built in 1895. Now the Whistler Hotel Bed and Breakfast and moved a few miles from its original home in Anchor, the Smiths bought the place in 1997 as a place to settle into retirement.
“We wanted to find a small cottage somewhere in the country where we could relax,” Robert Smith said. “But once she saw this place ...”
But the state denied the Smiths’ request to have the Whistler named a historical building because it had been moved in the past 50 years — the couple had it moved to its current location about a year after buying it.
The address is Angleton and the area is Rosharon, but the Smiths just call it home — and an enterprise.
“We didn’t start out to do a bed and breakfast,” Mary Smith said. “It just happened.”
The original hotel was about 1,800 square feet, but the bed and breakfast has grown to about 12,000 — again, not so much according to plan as happenstance. The couple designed the building on paper, but a construction expert said it needed modification.
“I planned to only have a portion of it two-story, but we had to add a whole second floor,” Robert Smith said. “That added four more bedrooms.”
More than a century before, the hotel accommodated passengers coming to Brazoria County on the International and Great Northern Railroad and the Houston & Brazos Valley Railroad.
Over time, it became the main meeting and trading place for communities around Anchor, named for Whistler’s hometown of Anchor, Ill. The hotel survived major hurricanes in 1900, 1911 and 1915, and was purchased by the Heim family in 1918. Someone from that family lived in the home until Mary Heim Thornton died in 1995, Mary Smith said.
Once the building was moved to its present location, putting it back plumb was one of Robert Smith’s first tasks.
“I enjoy the work — we both do,” Robert Smith said. “We’re workers.”
But not construction workers. Robert Smith is a retired Dow dispatcher and Mary Smith a former legal assistant. Making nine small 1800s-era hotel bedrooms into nine large and comfortable rooms has been a learning experience, Robert Smith said.
“I was fascinated with the way the hotel was originally constructed,” he said of its 20-foot studs. “That’s not the way they do things now. It was very well built.”
Preserving the hotel is important, said Brazoria County Historical Commission Chairman Marie Beth Jones. Jones’ grandmother and three uncles stayed in the hotel when they first came to Brazoria County in 1908.
Because the area where Anchor stood is in the Brazos River bottom, the community flooded and people moved away.
“A lot of the people who came to Brazoria County around the turn of the century got off at Anchor and settled near there,” Jones said. “There’s not much there now except pasture.”
Sharon Leyendecker of Tomball is a member of the Heim family and is glad the hotel is gaining new life.
“I’m very pleased they bought it and that they’ve made it into a bed and breakfast,” Leyendecker said. “It’s just wonderful to see what they’ve done. Anything we have we feel needs to go back there, we’re going to give it back.”
When the newly remodeled bed and breakfast is completed, it will be with an eye toward the past, Mary Smith said. Overlooking two ponds and a rose garden on an open 18 acres, the home surrounded by white fence and porch railings will include theme suites decorated as the American Old West, Oriental, Mexican-American, African-American and others depicting the cultures of people who stayed there over the years.
Today, two rooms — the Victorian Suite and African Suite — are ready for boarders.
“So many people came from different walks of life and caught the train and stayed at this hotel,” Mary Smith said. “People of so many cultures have been here.”
Keeping things authentic is part of the design. Along with as much original woodwork as possible, the couple also has preserved tax receipts, photographs and anything else from the hotel.
“All of the rooms will take you back to the late 1800s with the decor,” Robert Smith said. “They’ll have amenities that date back to that time or before.”
A 1,200-square-foot dining room isn’t old, but it does give people a central place to stop, visit and talk about things past and things to come, Mary Smith said.
“We wanted it to reflect all of the people who have stayed here over the years,” she said. “We’re not quite finished, but you can’t help but incorporate history into this.”
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On the Net:
The Whistler: http://www.whistlerhotelbnb.com
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