
This four-story, forty-room, steel-framed and red brick hotel was built by Gerhardt Von Minden for his daughter, Leonida Von Minden Speckels, and her husband, Ben, at the peak of railroad traffic through town. This was Shult's first commission after he left the Houston office of Alfred C. Finn and set up his own firm. The hotel included a theater and an apartment where the Speckels lived from 1927 to 1979. The hotel and theater combination is more common in the Northeast. It regularly hosts national and international paranormal enthusiasts seeking the ghosts that are reported to roam the hotel halls. Shult designed all the theaters ( AS23, BE38) for the Cole family, owners of a theater chain, including those in Rosenberg, Hallettsville, and Edna.