Steele Store-Makemson Hotel Building

Duane's take

The official marker's the word I'm going by here, so let me tell you what it says about a building that's been standing on this Georgetown corner since before most of Texas had running water. This is the story of the Steele Store-Makemson Hotel Building, and it is a story worth the telling. Around 1870, a man named M.E.

Steele put up a new building on a spot that had already seen some history. There had been an early log hotel on that very site before Steele ever broke ground. He replaced it with something considerably more substantial, and what he built became one of Georgetown's oldest commercial structures still standing today.

Under Steele's ownership, the building housed a mercantile and a bank. Two of the most essential operations a frontier town could ask for, right there under one roof. Now, somewhere in the early 1900s, a woman named Emma Dickman Makemson took the reins of the place.

She ran a hotel out of that same building, and she kept right on running it until 1924. You want to talk about persistence, about a woman who made something last, Emma Dickman Makemson is your example. But here is where the building itself gets to have its say.

Because whoever M.E. Steele hired to put this thing together, they were not skimping. The building shows the influence of the Italianate style, and it wears that influence with some confidence.

There is a truncated roof. A corner entry that greets you from two directions at once. An ornate frieze running just below the roofline like a carved stone crown.

And the stonework throughout is described as finely crafted, which in Texas, in 1870, means somebody took genuine pride in what their hands were doing. A log hotel came first, then stone and style and commerce, then a woman who kept a hotel going for decades. That corner in Georgetown has been earning its place in the story since before the town had much of a story to tell.

What the marker says

Built about 1870 by M.E. Steele on the site of an early log hotel, this is one of Georgetown's oldest commercial structures. During Steele's ownership it housed a mercantile and a bank. Emma Dickman Makemson later operated a hotel here from the early 1900s until 1924. Exhibiting influences of the Italianate style, the building features a truncated roof, corner entry, ornate frieze below the roofline, and finely crafted stonework. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1988