La Salle Hotel

🏛️The era

In the early twentieth century, the railroad was the lifeline of small Texas cities. Bryan was a major stop between Houston and Dallas on the Houston and Texas Central line, and the depot across Main Street from this hotel brought in a steady stream of travelers, salesmen and visitors. A good hotel near the station was both a business opportunity and a source of civic pride.

The 1920s were boom years for commercial building in many American towns. Cities large and small put up taller, more ambitious buildings, often in Classical or revival styles meant to look permanent and prosperous. A multistory hotel showed that a town had arrived.

Bryan also had a neighbor that brought plenty of visitors: the state's agricultural and mechanical college in nearby College Station, now Texas A&M University. Families visiting students, people in town on college business and many others needed a place to stay, eat and gather.

The La Salle opened in 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression, which arrived the very next year. It came out of a decade of confidence that wouldn't last, but the building itself held up through the hard times that followed.

👥People & events

The hotel was built for Robert Wistar Howell (1877–1960), one of Bryan's leading businessmen. Putting a seven-story building at the southern end of downtown was a big bet on the city's future, and when it was finished it was the tallest building in downtown Bryan.

To design it, Howell hired Austin architect George Louis Walling, who gave the building Classical details and a strong vertical look that draws the eye upward. The layout followed the grand hotels of the era. The ground floor held a dining room and coffee shop, the second floor held a convention hall and ballroom, and the five floors above contained about a hundred guest rooms.

Over the years the La Salle hosted a wide mix of guests: families, politicians, society figures, business travelers and military personnel. Its ballroom and dining rooms would have been natural places for local celebrations, meetings and gatherings.

Times changed, though. From 1959 to 1975 the building served as a nursing home, and then it stood closed for the last two decades of the twentieth century. A rehabilitation project brought it back, and in 2000 the La Salle reopened as a downtown hotel, the job it was built for.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The La Salle follows a story that played out on Main Streets across America. Railroad-era downtown hotels did well while trains carried the country's travelers. As cars, highways and roadside motels took over after World War II, many of these hotels lost business, changed uses or were torn down.

Its later life as a nursing home, followed by years of standing empty, fits that national pattern of downtown decline. Many similar buildings didn't make it, and the depot that once stood across the street is gone, as the marker notes.

Its revival in 2000 reflects the historic preservation movement, which in recent decades has helped many American towns find new value in older downtown buildings. Bringing a landmark back to its original purpose is one of the more satisfying outcomes preservation can achieve.

The hotel's ties to the nearby college and to military visitors also connect it to a larger theme: how universities and the people who passed through them shaped the growth of small Texas cities.

🧭If you visit

Stand across the street and look up. Seven stories may sound modest today, but the building's vertical lines and Classical details still make it stand out downtown. Try to picture the depot that once faced it across Main Street, with passengers stepping off the train and walking straight to the front door.

Because it's once again a working hotel, you can do more than look at the outside. Whether you're a guest or just stopping in, keep in mind the spaces described on the marker, like the dining room, coffee shop and second-floor ballroom.

Downtown Bryan is good for walking, with historic commercial buildings nearby, and Texas A&M is just down the road in College Station. The La Salle makes a good base or stop on a Brazos Valley road trip, linking railroad history, college-town history and the comeback of a classic Texas downtown.