Old Southern Hotel Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Llano County stands a building that has seen a whole lot of Texas roll through its front door, and the stone walls it's wearing today have been earning their keep since about 1880. That's when a man named J.W.

Owen had this hotel built, right here where stagecoaches were still the thing, still the way you got from one end of nowhere to the other. Owen didn't lay those stones himself, though. He brought in two stonemasons, J.K.

Finlay and John Goodman, and those two men raised up a solid two-story structure that became a stagecoach stop. You can picture it. Dusty travelers climbing down, grateful for a roof and four walls that weren't moving.

Then comes 1883, and a fellow by the name of Colonel W.A.H. Miller buys the place. Now, Col.

Miller apparently looked at that two-story building and decided it needed one more story, because sure enough, up went a third floor on his watch. Somebody with that title tends to think in terms of adding, not subtracting. Later on, an annex went up on the west side of the building, and then an addition on the north took shape as a dining hall and kitchen.

That kitchen turned out to be the real heart of the place. Family-style meals, served right there, the kind where food comes to the table and you pass it around and nobody goes hungry. The hotel was going by the Colonial Inn by that point, and it kept right on feeding people until the 1950s, when the business finally closed.

The additions, all that growth, all those extra rooms and the dining hall and the kitchen, they were removed in 1977. What's left is the bones. The original vision of J.W.

Owen, the stonework of Finlay and Goodman, and one extra floor courtesy of Colonel Miller. Some buildings just refuse to be forgotten.

What the marker says

J.W. Owen had this hotel building constructed about 1880. Stonemasons J.K. Finlay and John Goodman built the original two-story structure, which was a stagecoach stop. The third floor was added during the ownership of Col. W.A.H. Miller, who bought it in 1883. An annex was later added to the west side of the building, and an addition on the north served as dining hall and kitchen. There, family-style meals were served until the business, then called the Colonial Inn, closed in the 1950s. The additions were removed in 1977. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980